-The Hindu Business Line CM writes to Modi, submits memorandum Chennai: The Tamil Nadu government has urged the Centre to sanction ?39,565 crore from the National Disaster Response Fund, and to release immediately Rs. 1,000 crore ‘on account’ to take up drought mitigation work in the state. The state was hit by heavy floods in December 2015 and by Cyclone Vardah in December 2016. The State Disaster Response Fund is not sufficient to...

-NDTV A recent headline in Quartz, an otherwise serious media agency, claims that Jammu and Kashmir is the first state in India to "commit to a universal basic income" (UBI). A glance at the original source quickly negates this claim: it is based on nothing more than "seeds of a thought" (sic) from the Finance Minister of J&K about possible cash transfers for a small minority of poor households. This is...

-The Hindu The Niti Aayog has called for a review of the provisions of the Right To Education Act that stipulate that children who don’t perform well cannot be held back up to class VIII. It said the good intention behind the norm is detrimental to the learning process. It has also suggested a system where direct benefit transfers offer the poor a choice between subsidised purchases or equivalent cash to buy...

-The Hindu The ‘batta’ system of rolling financing has shrunk as money cannot be withdrawn from banks, and bearer cheques pile up Varanasi: For the already distressed weavers and poorly paid labourers in the famous Banarasi sari industry, demonetisation has come as a crippling blow. Withdrawal limits of Rs. 50,000 on current accounts (around a 10th of the actual requirement in the trade) and falling business post November 8 have constrained traders from...

The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) election manifesto for 2014 Lok Sabha election says that if elected to the Centre, it will then "(p)ut in place welfare measures for farmers above 60 years in age, small and marginal farmers and farm labours", among other things. Despite the formation of a BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre in 2014, the latest available data on farm suicides from the...