-The Times of India DEHRADUN: Officials involved in the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna (PMAY) are facing a unique problem as many Muslim women beneficiaries of the scheme are insisting on having their pictures clicked only in a burqa. Beneficiaries, all of whom are women, are allotted an amount of Rs 1.60 lakh to construct a pucca house under the scheme. However, before releasing the payment, the beneficiary's picture has to be taken...

-Down to Earth Sri Sri Ravishankar’s organisation went back on its commitment to pay the fine for hosting a three-day festival that affected Yamuna floodplains The Art of Living Foundation, which is led by spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravishankar, must pay remaining Rs 4.75-crore fine for hosting a massive festival on the Banks of the River Yamuna in Delhi, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) said today. Strongly criticising organisation for going ahead...

-PTI “Repercussions from the currency exchange initiative will likely persist through the first quarter of 2017.” Washington: India’s demonetisation led to huge cash shortages that have “adversely affected” consumption and like a “vacuum cleaner” it sucked in cash and then was slowly replacing the currency, a senior IMF official has said. “You’ve heard about so-called ‘helicopter drops’ of money with unconventional monetary policies, so one way to characterise this demonetisation initiative is as...

-TheWire.in Farmer suicides and hunger deaths plague flagship village of SP government. “Have you heard of kangaali mein aata geela? That is our situation,”says Sugha Singh as he sits outside Balwan Singh’s house along with other village men under the tree on a warm February afternoon. He is referring to an old Hindi idiom which means getting into more hardships one after another. They are mourning the death of Munni Devi, 78,...

-The Indian Express Demonetisation shows India’s social welfare measures like MGNREGS to be worryingly patchy Following the announcement of demonetisation, reports of its devastating impact on informal sector workers, farmers and migrants began to pour in from across the country. Seeking evidence on two questions — do social security measures work in the face of such an economic shock, and do these programmes themselves face disruption because of demonetisation — we conducted...