-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Eight key states logged a massive increase in demand for work under the job guarantee scheme MGNREGA this fiscal, an increase that is seen as astronomical in the history of the programme. Three other states saw high demand during the earlier part of the year but have registered a sharp fall in later months. Still, the annual demand for work under MGNREGA is projected to stay...

-The Indian Express Linking it to ration cards ends up denying poor their rightful entitlements In September 2017, 11-year-old Santoshi, resident of Simdega district of Jharkhand, succumbed to starvation. According to her mother, she died “asking for rice, but there was not a single grain at home”. She was deprived of her subsidised ration as her family’s ration card was cancelled because it was not linked to Aadhaar. Marandi in Jharkhand met...

-Newsclick.in   PM Modi - who promised to create 1 crore jobs - is supremely indifferent to this crushing crisis.   In Jind district of Haryana, 8 posts of peon and one post of process server were advertised. Authorities were inundated with 14,836 applications for the former and 3662 for the latter. That’s about 2055 applicants per vacancy. Although the peon’s position required just class 10 eligibility, graduates, post graduates and even PhD...

-Livemint.com Sluggish wage growth, lower crop planting, fluctuating prices paint a dismal picture for farmers and the agriculture sector New data released by the government on rural wages, crop prices and sowing of winter crops reveals that rural distress is worsening. Planting of wheat, the main winter crop, between October and early January was 5% lower than a year ago due to lower sowing in Madhya Pradesh by close to a million hectares;...

-The Telegraph Chandigarh: Farmer Balwinder Singh from Patiala had taken a loan of Rs 41,700 from a cooperative bank. When he received his loan-waiver certificate from the Punjab government on Sunday, the amount waived was mentioned as Rs 7. On a day chief minister Amarinder Singh launched the loan-waiver scheme in Chandigarh to help distressed farmers, many across the state alleged only a fraction of their debts had been written off. While Balwinder...