-Hindustan Times Dehradun: Uttarakhand has not been able to improve its agricultural growth in the past 15 years though the majority of its population and area are still classified as rural and the state government has a record of nearly 100% spending of its budgetary allocations. Hill farming is still awaiting special attention from the government as much of the state’s agriculture budget comes from the Centre and most of the agri-development...

-Livemint.com Investments via gender lens increase access to capital for women and girls, improve gender equality, say experts Less than 7% of all philanthropic dollars find their way to programmes designed specifically for girls and women—not a promising figure if gender equality in the world is the ultimate goal. This was the startling finding of a 2014 study by Women Moving Millions, an international not-for-profit agency. To improve gender equality, experts suggest...

-The Hindu Women continue to face discrimination in terms of owning assets like land and payment of wages, accessing credit, technology, market and irrigation facilities Hyderabad: Such is the gender bias that even when her spouse commits suicide forced by agrarian crisis, the woman farmer is left to fend for herself. Even as they keep breaking the proverbial glass ceiling to move up the corporate ladder and make a mark virtually in every...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Modi government tries hard to signal a makeover but beyond the symbolic it does not change much. Budget 2016 is not important for the proposals that it has made but for what it tries to signal about the proposed makeover, in a limited way, of the Narendra Modi government. The budget does try hard to claim that the Modi government is not a “suit-boot” administration, an image...

-The Hindu Business Line Ten years on, the National rural Employment Guarantee Act endures because it provides the poor a political voice February 2016 marks a decade since India’s National rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA) came into force. NREGA is both revolutionary and modest; it promises every rural household one hundred days of employment annually on public-works projects, but the labour is taxing and pays minimum wage, at best. Many charges have...