-The Hindu Chief Secretary instructs State officials to take preparatory measures Uttar Pradesh is staring at a drought, the senior-most official in the State has said. Noting that the State received low rainfall during the monsoon, Chief Secretary Rajiv Kumar has instructed divisional commissioners and district magistrates to brace for a “potential drought”. Mr. Kumar has instructed officials to coordinate with all departments and take “necessary steps on a priority basis”. The Chief Secretary has...

-TheWire.in Growth in bad loans raises questions about due diligence measures followed by renewable Energy, power PSUs over last five years. New Delhi: Defending the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency’s (IREDA) grant of a Rs 10.35 crore loan to BJP president Amit Shah’s son, railway minister Piyush Goyal recently stated that the financing agency had lent money to about 2,000 applicants “in the past one year or so”. While this growth in lending...

-The Times of India Many members of the Niti Aayog's newly constituted Working Group on Nutrition have significant conflicts of interests. Several are representatives of international agencies, which have close ties to multinational food companies including Nestle, Hindustan Unilever, Coca Cola, Monsanto, Mars and Ajinomoto, and which have been pushing packaged therapeutic food to address malnutrition. The government has repeatedly clarified that packaged Energy dense food is against India's policy on...

-The Indian Express The Indian Express points to spreading employment distress in a market where fresh hiring opportunities are increasingly limited. TEXTILE to capital goods, banking to I-T, start-ups to Energy, the economy’s downward spiral is leaving a trail of job losses across both old and new economy sectors. In the near absence of consolidated employment numbers, disaggregated data collated from across these sectors by The Indian Express points to spreading employment distress...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The prevalence of low body weight, stunting and wasting is "significantly higher" among children from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, according to a government survey that nutrition experts say underscores challenges that demand solutions beyond just the availability of more food. The survey, carried out this year, has documented 39 per cent stunting (impaired growth with possible long-term impacts) among boys below five years from Dalit households...