-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...

-The Business Standard The Punjab experience suggests rising agricultural productivity doesn't automatically translate into better jobs,but the story doesn't end there. A recent paper on the post-Green revolution economic transition of Punjab's peasantry, published by Punjab Agricultural University professors Sukhpal Singh and Shruti Bhogal, suggests that increasing productivity of rural workers is only one part of the agriculture to manufacturing transition. Punjab has the most mechanized agricultural sector in the country,...

-Tehelka Bureau Though well-meaning, the new Land Acquisition Act is far from being a perfect legislation. But the urgency to amend a law even before a real field test signals a larger agenda. By all counts, this was expected. Long before he became the BJP and subsequently the nation's chosen one, Narendra Modi had made it clear that his model of development gains from the ease of doing business. Then, days ahead...

-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar (Odisha): The state government today issued a notification, making it mandatory for private hospitals and nursing homes, which receive government land at a subsidised rate, to provide free treatment to poor patients. The no-objection certificate to run the hospitals will be withdrawn if they fail to comply with the order. According to the notification, free treatment to those belonging to the below poverty line category (BPL) patients should be provided...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In what could point to serious security loopholes in Aadhar project, an internal risk assessment by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in 2012 had found that the enrolment device could be taken outside its defined territory, including foreign land, to enroll people and send data to UIDAI for processing. The anomaly led a UIDAI committee, set up in the wake of the government's January...