-The Telegraph Nearly 10 crore children have the midday meal in 11 lakh schools every working day New Delhi: The Centre has allowed privately managed centralised kitchens to be engaged to serve food to schoolchildren in rural areas under its midday meal scheme — a decision it had earlier announced in May 2017 only to roll back in April this year — raising fears of loss of jobs for thousands of cooks. Trade...

-The Hindu The campaign to end open defecation can succeed only if it takes communities with it India’s declaration on the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi that its rural areas are now open defecation-free will be acknowledged around the world as a milestone in its developmental journey. Cleanliness and sanitation were central to Gandhi’s concerns for his vast number of impoverished countrymen, and should ideally have been pursued zealously by governments...

-Livemint.com * The retail prices of onions spiked to Rs.70- Rs.80 earlier this week * Floods in key onion-producing states of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and others have hurt supplies New Delhi: The government has banned export of onions with immediate effect to check spiraling prices which touched Rs.70- Rs.80 per kg in the open market. The ban covers all varieties of onions. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Commerce...

-The Hindu Putting more money in the hands of rural households will stir up the economy The government’s statistical machinery has begun work on revising the indices that capture the trends in consumer prices experienced in rural India. This opens up the prospect for an upward revision in the wages paid out to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The current national average wage is just about...

-The Hindu Business Line Write to Commerce Minister demanding negotiations be put on hold till they are consulted New Delhi: A number of farmer organisations, trade unions, livestock and fisheries groups and civil society bodies have written an open letter to Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal stating that most of them had not been consulted on the on-going negotiations for the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) pact and expressed concerns that their...