Although the focus of erstwhile UPA and the present NDA government has been to achieve higher economic growth by reaping the 'demographic dividend', a recent report from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) informs us that a substantial chunk of the population underwent ageing during the last 60 years. The report entitled Elderly in India: Profile and Programmes 2016 from CSO (that comes under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation) shows...

-The Indian Express (Edit) Punjab’s wheat payment crisis strengthens the case for direct transfers in MSP operations. For a state whose farmers have already suffered from crashing basmati paddy prices and damage to their cotton crop from whitefly pest attacks, the current payment crisis in wheat couldn’t have come at a worse time. Government agencies have so far procured over 6.5 million tonnes (mt) of wheat from Punjab in the new...

-The Hindu The survey reveals that 90 per cent of the litigants earn less than Rs. 3 lakh per annum and the median expected cost of litigation for this group is around Rs. 16,000. Most of the litigants in the country earn less than Rs. 3 lakh a year, says a new survey by the Bengaluru-based civil society organisation DAKSH. The nationwide “Access to Justice” survey was conducted across 305 locations in 24...

-The Indian Express At a time of extreme rural distress, the Centre is violating the basic provisions of the employment guarantee act We are currently in the midst of an unprecedented early drought that is already affecting at least 10 states. Even if the met department’s optimistic prediction of a better-than-normal monsoon comes to pass, it will be at least two months before there is much relief in most rural areas...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: As many as 882 deaths in five years, nearly four-fifths of them in a single state. These statistics do not pertain to some inexorable natural calamities. These are figures of tribal children who lost their lives in state-run residential schools across the country between 2010 and 2015. These are numbers of innocent lives lost seemingly on account of sheer official apathy, manifest in the lack of basic...