-The Indian Express Maharashtra govt rolls out new plan for slum-free Mumbai Mumbai: The Maharashtra government on Thursday rolled out a new plan to take Mumbai towards a slum-free status. Under this plan, over 18 lakh slum dwellers residing in slum tenements, that came up between 2000 and 2011, have now been guaranteed a replacement house. However, it will not be for free. All these residents would need to pay for the...

-VillageSquare.in The country’s particularly vulnerable tribal groups, who live mostly in dwindling forests, have not been well served by the government’s administrative machinery, but have slowly been reduced to virtual serfdom Max Weber, the 19thcentury German sociologist, had extolled the virtues of bureaucracy. India used to celebrate its steel frame governing the country for decades, and which continues to rule us till date, though it is unfashionable to sing its virtues any...

-The Telegraph Chandigarh: The Congress government in Punjab, like the Mamata Banerjee dispensation in Bengal, has refused to implement the flagship health insurance scheme of the Centre. While the other north Indian States under BJP rule - Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir - have signed the memorandum of understanding with the Union health ministry to implement the Ayushman Bharat scheme, the Amarinder Singh government in Punjab has refused to...

-The Indian Express Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana does not inspire confidence of farmers. They have to wait for months, sometimes years to get compensation. This article is the second in the series assessing the performance of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre in the agri-food space over the last four years. The first one appeared in this newspaper on May 2 (IE, ‘Four years of neglecting farmers’). Here we look...

-Financial Express The PMFBY involves farmers, banks, state and central government, insurance companies and re-insurers. This article is second in the series to assess performance of BJP-led NDA government at the Centre in agri-food space over the last four years. The first one appeared in this paper on April 30 (goo.gl/AGnEaJ).Here, we look at BJP’s promise in its manifesto, namely, “implement a farm insurance scheme to take care of crop loss”....