-Groundxero.in India’s forests are officially on sale. Forests, which are ecological and cultural constructs intrinsically linked with human communities that have been living in and using those for ages, have turned into mere repositories of ‘products’ such as timber and ‘ecosystem services’ that could be quantified, valued, priced and exchanged—or so the Draft National Forest Policy prepared by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change(MoEF & CC) would have us...

-The Indian Express The preliminary findings in THRee of these districts — Pune, Nandurbar and Raigad — show that percentage of wasting and of under-nutrition is higher than as recorded by the NFHS-4 and the Integrated Child Development System (ICDS). Mumbai: A survey by the public health department in four districts of Maharashtra has found significant under-reporting of malnutrition cases. The preliminary findings in THRee of these districts — Pune, Nandurbar and...

-The Times of India • What does the Finance Commission do? In India’s federal structure, taxation powers and obligations for various services — like law and order, health, education — are unequally shared between the Centre and the states. Hence, the Constitution mandates the setting up of a Finance Commission (FC) every five years to recommend how revenues from central taxes should be shared between the Centre and the states. A fair...

-Newsclick.in Shrinking farm incomes, frozen wages and lack of jobs is driving people to work in the scheme for a pittance. Nearly 9 crore Indians applied for work in the rural jobs guarantee scheme (MGNREGS) in 2017-18, according to data put out by the ministry of rural development. That’s a staggering 42% of the rural work force. Of those who applied for work, some 1.4 crore persons (or about 15%) were turned...

-The Hindu Business Line Ahmedabad: Ahead of the kharif sowing season, Gujarat is facing a cash shortage as banks have started receiving lesser cash than required from the RBI. This has resulted in the rationing of cash disbursements at several banks in parts of Gujarat, mainly in the north. Banking sources confirmed experiencing cash shortage at the currency chest level from where the disbursement of cash takes place to the bank branches. There...