-Down to Earth The protests are in opposition to the vague position of the Rules on forest-dwelling communities in the compensatory afforestation process The draft Compensatory Afforestation Fund Rules, 2018, notified by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) on February 16, have sparked protests by tribal organisations in Odisha. The protests are due to the fact that the Rules are vague on the role of communities in...

-Down to Earth What is the use of strategy when no special budget was allocated to double farmers’ income, says a senior NITI Aayog official anonymously In a two-day closed door meeting on doubling farmers’ income, the government claimed that there is no lack of funds to implement a seven-point strategy devised to double farmers’ income by 2022. The national conference, Agriculture 2022 - Doubling Farmers’ Income, which ends today, hosts sessions...

-Outlook “BMS decided to boycott ILC due to the centre’s anti-labour policies," RSS trade union President said. The Centre has indefinitely postponed the Indian Labour Conference to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after RSS trade union BMS threatened to boycott it over the Union budget that was “unsympathetic to labour and Workers”. At the 47th ILC scheduled to be held on February 26 and 27, trade unions and employers were...

-The Indian Express The state Cabinet on Tuesday ratified the draft medical policy, which, among others, proposes a standard treatment guideline covering all hospitals to ensure 'rationale, effective and affordable treatment'. Thiruvananthapuram: In an effort to ensure that all children below the age of five are immunised, the Left Front government in Kerala has made vaccination certificate mandatory for admission to class-I from the next academic session. Health Minister K K Shailaja...

-Livemint.com Latest data as per the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the Saubhagya scheme shows inconsistencies in the number of rural households in the country The opposition has increasingly questioned the government’s record in rural electrification and alleged frequent shifting of goalposts. For example, the deadline for electrifying all villages now stands at May 2018, after missing the May 2017 target. While available data shows that the Narendra Modi government...