-The Times of India Blog Whatever else won UP for BJP it wasn’t development and good governance. Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to office ostensibly on a plank of economic and administrative ‘acche din’. Sadly, he has not delivered. So voters either don’t know his record or they voted for BJP for quite different reasons. What is the prime minister’s record on development and governance? In three years of BJP rule at...

-The Indian Express The Aadhaar is no solution to the problems of the Midday Meal Scheme The Aadhaar scheme was initiated by the UPA government about seven years ago. But it is to the credit of the current Narendra Modi-led government that it saw the potential of Aadhar as an enabler of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) schemes and used it for the dispersal of subsidies. But the government has got it wrong...

-The Indian Express Indian farmers are facing multiple crises. Punjab’s case highlights their problems. THE ANSWER TO who will form the next government in Punjab is currently sealed in the ballot boxes. Meanwhile, there are reports that the Election Commission has written to the home minister, reinforcing its demand to make electoral bribery a cognisable offence. But what about the assurances made in election manifestos which promise voters the moon before the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A parliamentary panel has voiced shock that a scholarship for underprivileged meritorious students had not been revised since the scheme was launched in 2008, leaving it at less than half of what households now spend on average on a higher secondary student. According to a survey on social consumption, households spend Rs 12,619 a year on a plus-2 student's schooling, while the yearly amount under the National Means-cum-Merit...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A revamped central housing scheme promising shelter for all rural families by 2022 has no room for the landless. Dalits, Adivasis and nomadic tribes who have no land will be forced live without dignity as the Centre has discontinued assistance to landless people for purchasing land under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G), activists say. It has also dropped plans for a law to give plots to the...