-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: A NITI Aayog sub-group has suggested increasing the flexi-fund component of centrally-sponsored schemes (CSS) to 25 per cent from the current 10. This would give more flexibility to States to spend on development and social welfare schemes, said Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and Convenor of the NITI Aayog’s sub-group of Chief Ministers on ‘Rationalisation of Centrally-sponsored Schemes’, after submitting the report to Prime...

-The Indian Express Punjab is a case study in agricultural and economic mismanagement in India From the breadbasket of India, Punjab has become a basket-case economy. Endowed with ample water and good soil, Punjab’s happy, progressive people had a dream that is now a distant memory. Punjab’s decline started with its trifurcation. In its bid to establish a separate identity, the poli-tical establishment obsessed over a religious-political agenda and steered the state...

-Reuters NEW DELHI: Government's main program to fight child malnutrition has been hit by budget cuts that make it difficult to pay wages of millions of health workers, cabinet minister Maneka Gandhi said on Monday in a rare public criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policies. The government in February slashed social sector budgets to boost infrastructure spending in a bid to fasten the pace of economic recovery. States were asked to...

-IPSNews.net UNITED NATIONS: When the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics to Professor Angus Deaton of Princeton University, the accolade had a significant relevance to the United Nations. The Academy bestowed the honour on the British-born Deaton, 69, primarily for his analysis of consumption, poverty and welfare.   Deaton’s research reflects some of the socio-economic issues on the U.N. agenda, including poverty alleviation, economic inequalities, consumption patterns, household...

-NDTV Why is it that every time anything has to be done about pollution in our cities or in fact large environmental issues, elected governments do very little and it needs the Supreme Court (or other courts) to intervene? Between 1998 and 2001 the Supreme Court issued orders on pollution in Delhi NINETEEN times. On Monday, they intervened again and asked why tolls cannot be imposed on trucks passing through Delhi to...