-Hindustan Times The Centre has renamed the Matritva Sahyog Yojana - a scheme under which pregnant and lactating mothers get Rs 6,000 for the first live birth - as Pradhan Mantri Matritva Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) in yet another instance of the Prime Minister’s name being prefixed to a government programme. Government sources said the name of the scheme, which was cleared by the Union cabinet last week, was changed to make it...

-The Economic Times Aadhaar came with a lot of promises. They were brought by some of the brightest in India. Aadhaar promises to remove duplicates and ghosts from government databases, deliver subsidies to beneficiaries, collect taxes, provide financial inclusion and eliminate corruption. Here is why it cannot deliver anything it promises. Aadhaar came with a lot of promises. They were brought by some of the brightest in India. Promise 1: Removing Fraud and Duplicates In...

-The Indian Express Unorganised sector is worst-affected by demonetisation. Can banks go to them? An incident in 2000, during my initial years of work, woke me up to an uncomfortable question about post-economic liberalisation India. I was at a meeting with waste-pickers at Digha in Patna and a woman told me of her troubles with a Rs 500 note. She had saved money and changed it into a Rs 500 note, wrapped...

-PTI Asking party workers to reach out to SCs, STs and women, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said the government would soon launch a ‘Stand-up India’ scheme to provide loans of up to Rs. 1 crore to help members of these communities become big entrepreneurs. “In the next few days under ‘Stand Up India’ scheme, every bank branch will provide loans of up to Rs 1 crore to one SC/ST and...

-DNA Reintroduction of oil seed and pulses which require less water is must, govt told Mumbai: To curb the growing number of suicides, Maharashtra government should ask farmers of 14 suicide-prone districts to adopt the Sikkim-pattern non-chemical farming. This suggestion has come from the committee which was appointed by the government to look into the vexed issue. The report filed by the committee said that the rain-sensitive cash crop in these 14 crisis...