-The Telegraph New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal will co-host a "world environment conference" here next weekend to discuss climate change, global warming, dwindling forests, energy resources, loss of biodiversity and other related issues. Parliamentarians, judges, environmentalists, scientists, lawyers and academicians will be among delegates from across the globe slated to attend the World Conference on Environment-2017, being co-sponsored by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and various Indian government agencies. The conference...

-The Hindu The CSO has been consistent with its methods, allowing little room for suspicion of window dressing. Did demonetisation deal a knock-out punch to the Indian economy? Or was it just a mild tap from which it is already recovering? This debate should have been settled with the latest second advance estimates from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) which peg FY17 GDP growth at 7.1%. But commentators who believe that the economy...

-Scroll.in India's social-sector spending remains woefully low and despite claims of being a pro-farmer Budget, the effective allocations are nearly the same as last year. Some commentators expected that the Union Budget 2017-’18 would craft a sharp departure from earlier budgets of this government. This it would do to mitigate the immense suffering of millions of casual workers, farmers and small traders caused by the “shock and awe” of the astoundingly callous...

-The Hindu Business Line Fails to ease distress caused by demonetisation’ New Delhi: Terming the Union Budget 2017-18, presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, as detrimental to the realisation of the welfare State, as enshrined in the Constitution, civil rights organisations said it “fails to respond to the present situation of distress and unemployment especially aggravated by demonetisation.” “The Budget seems to be perpetuating unemployment, hunger and malnutrition,” said a release by the...

-Livemint.com MGNREGS has to cover significant ground to evolve as an effective demand driven asset creating public work programme Union finance minister Arun Jaitley’s claim that he was making the highest ever allocation to Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in this year’s budge made headlines. Here are five questions which can help understand why MGNREGS related discussion needs to go beyond talks of budgetary allocation. * Is 2017-18 record allocation for...