-Down to Earth Even after an order by the Supreme Court, the government has not released the payments The flagship scheme for rural employment generation, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), is facing severe fund crunch this year, resulting in unpaid dues of Rs 3,066 crore in wage payments in 19 states. Around 87 per cent of the scheme’s budget for this year has already by exhausted. A civil...
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Stubble burning and pollution: It is a deeper question of the dignity and identity of farmers - Poonam Pandey, Govert Valkenburg, Annapurna Mamidipudi and Wiebe Bijker
-Hindustan Times How is it that farmers, who were celebrated as national heroes and saviors of the country after the Green Revolution, are now criminalised and called irresponsible? If they are feeding the nation, isn’t the problem of stubble burning a collective responsibility? Attempts by a range of agencies to address the issue of stubble burning in Punjab have repeatedly failed. We suggest that this is not only because we’ve missed...
More »Gujarat model: The gleam of state's high growth numbers hides dark reality of poverty, inequality -Maitreesh Ghatak
-Scroll.in An analysis of data shows that the Gujarat model is a bubble waiting to burst. The Gujarat economy continues to be an enigma. In 2014, many considered the state’s economic performance nothing short of miraculous and credited it to the magic touch of Narendra Modi, then the four-term chief minister of the state. This even led to the coinage of a new term: Modinomics. Three years later, as Gujarat heads...
More »Kharif crops in good condition; not hit by rains: Pattanayak
-PTI New Delhi: The harvest-ready kharif crops of this year are in good condition and have not been affected by recent heavy rains in some parts of the country, Agriculture Secretary Shobhana K Pattanayak said today. The minor losses due to rains in the isolated pockets was factored in during the first projection made last month with respect to total kharif (summer) foodgrains output for the 2017-18 crop year (July-June), he said. According...
More »How will India address illegal sand mining without any data? -Ishan Kukreti
-Down to Earth New laws to regulate sand mining have not had much impact Illegal sand mining is a perennial problem in India. But it assumes gargantuan proportions right before the onset of monsoon because swollen rivers make extraction extremely difficult during the rainy season. To make most of the lean period, mine owners and hoarders try to dig out as much sand as possible, through legal and illegal means, in...
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