-The Indian Express New body must retain the Commission's mechanisms for Centre-state discussion The prime minister spoke from the ramparts of the Red Fort this morning, putting to rest all speculation about the future of the Planning Commission. I write as a member of 10 years standing of this apex think-tank. The Planning Commission was the brainchild of Jawaharlal Nehru, who created it by cabinet order; it has no legislative sanction. Prime...

-i9media When tourism alone couldn't achieve the desired growth, modernisation of agriculture was adopted and thus the district of Umaria in Madhya Pradesh was able to achieve prosperity. Madhya Pradesh has been continuously drawing attention of other states because of its agricultural growth in recent years. Some of its districts, which used to have very low productivity, are now contributing significantly in the agricultural development. Umaria is one such district where agriculture...

-The Hindustan Times Pragati Abhiyan and a member of the National Consortium of CSOs working on MGNREGA India is a vast country and every year either the quantity or the distribution of rainfall is deviant in one part or the other. Moreover, Indian farming is still predominantly rain-fed. In such a scenario, the MGNREGA can do two very important jobs: Drought relief and drought mitigation. Recently, the NDA discussed the MGNREGA in Parliament....

-The Indian Express The original Act identifies a factory based on the number of workers employed. More than half the factories across the country may be exempt from the restrictive provisions applicable under the current legislative framework, with the Factories Amendment Bill, 2014 proposing to revise the definition of a factory by effectively doubling the threshold of the number of workers employed in such a unit. The move is expected to ease...

-Women's Feature Service In 2000, countries around the world pledged to fulfill the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight time-bound targets to eradicate poverty and hunger and uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity. India, which is ranked 63 out of 81 countries on the Global Hunger Index, has been working towards finding workable solutions to a problem that especially affects children between 0 to 5...