-Newsclick.in Funding is not keeping pace with demand, and delays or vanished dues are discouraging job seekers in these times of extreme rural distress. Here is a little known but chilling fact about the rural job guarantee scheme, MGNREGS: between April and mid-December this year, about 1.28 crore people who demanded jobs were turned back. This refusal to give work has been happening every year but it has increased after the Modi...

-Livemint.com Panel on doubling farm incomes proposes shifting from supply-led to demand-led production system New Delhi: The government should undertake a radical overhaul of the agriculture ecosystem by moving from a supply-push production system to a demand-led one, according to a committee set up by the centre to recommend strategies to double farmer incomes by 2022. The agriculture ministry should also set up an “empowered committee” to operationalize and monitor progress of doubling...

-The Hindu The former Chief Election Commissioner on the EVM controversy, why the Supreme Court’s verdict on criminals in politics is a missed opportunity, and electoral bonds The debate on the reliability of electronic voting machines (EVMs) refuses to settle, with political parties continuing to voice their concerns about malfunctioning machines. Former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi explains how EVMs work, why he is disappointed with the Supreme Court for refusing to...

-Down to Earth While other states had declared drought months ago, Gujarat govt kept calling it a “scarcity of water” While other states like Karnataka, Maharshtra, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh had declared drought at the very offset of the southwest monsoon, and began work on mitigation measures, the Gujarat government remained silent despite receiving deficit rainfall in most of the districts. Until yesterday, the Gujarat government had been terming the situation...

-TheWire.in Implementing the loan waiver in Chhattisgarh, MP and Rajasthan will not be easy. It will cost Rs 80,000 crore and might need the states to double the spending on agriculture. New Delhi: On Monday, the newly appointed chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Kamal Nath, proudly announced that his first executive decision was to waive farm loans in the state. While campaigning for the assembly elections, the Congress party had promised that if...