-Down to Earth The programme can provide a safety net for the poor, not just in COVID-19 times, but for times to come In these darkest days of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) — when jobs and economies have collapsed — 56 million households got work in the past three months and these jobs provided relief. This was under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which perhaps is the...

-Moneycontrol.com The RTI response shows that at least two companies — Jyoti CNV Automation and AMTZ Basic — to whom an advance was released, were later not recommended by the technical committee constituted under the DGHS There is a vast difference in the prices of ventilators bought under PM CARES fund, and the two of the companies to whom an advance was released were later not recommended by the technical committee constituted...

-Scroll.in The trend is also linked to recent locust outbreaks, as large quantities of vegetation provide food for locust swarms. Ravindranath lives in the heart of the Thar desert in India. He and his family are agropastoralists – people who grow crops and rear livestock – in the village of Kalu in Bikaner district, Rajasthan. But the dry grasslands that people like Ravindranath have depended on for centuries for pasture are slowly being...

-The Hindu During the same period, an amount of ₹39.68 lakh was collected in foreign currency, according to information now available on the Fund’s website The PM CARES Fund collected more than ₹3,076 crore in the first five days after it was set up, according to information now available on the Fund’s website. “During 2019-20, an amount of ₹3,076.62 crore was collected under PM CARES Fund,” says the response to a query on...

Huge sums of Money are allocated for the rural and agrarian sectors by the Union Government in its annual budget every year, and rightly so. But in the absence of an adequate number of officials in rural areas, can the various schemes and programmes of the government be implemented properly? We will find the answer if we think about this issue deeply and the answer that would emerge should bother...