-Scroll.in By one estimate 1.4 crore households have been re-designated as Above Poverty Line during the Rajasthan government’s drive to trim the list of PDS beneficiaries. As the afternoon sun bore down, Naujibai Bhil waited for her turn outside the public grievance office in Rajasthan’s Rajsamand district. “The sarpanch cancelled my red ration card and replaced it with a blue one,” said the adivasi woman from Daang Ke Vaas village, holding her head...

-Business Standard Also for other programme impacting the non-urban economy, in the wake of two years of partial drought The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) seems likely to get its highest budgetary allocation since its launch a decade before. This allocation for 2016-17 could cross the previous highs of Rs 40,100 crore in the 2010-11 Budget and Rs 40,000 crore in 2011-12, by then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. Actual spending...

-CounterView.net In an incident which has created a flutter among Right to Information (RTI) activists across India, goonda elements, said to be close to a BJP legislator in Rajasthan have brutally attacked the 100-day Accountability or Jawabdehi Yatra, begun by Magsaysay Award winner and pioneer of the RTI Act Aruna Roy. The incident took place in Aklera area of Zalawad district, which falls into Manoharthana constituency. According to eye-witnesses, MLA Kanwar Lala...

-Hindustan Times Bhopal/Sagar: When 39-year-old Ram Dwivedi shot himself with a rifle in Uttar Pradesh’s water-starved Banda district a few months ago, it came as a shock even to local residents in the drought-ravaged Bundelkhand region. In the past few years, most people who committed suicide in the area were either tenants or small-time farmers. But despite having 20 acres of land, Dwivedi couldn’t generate enough income to sustain his six-member family. Hit...

-The Indian Express A renewed funding squeeze may undermine MGNREGA’s recent revival, fear civil society activists. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme which guarantees 100 days of wage employment per year to rural households, may have staged a revival in the last two quarters after showing a declining trend in person-days generation during the first year of the Narendra Modi government. But the turnaround could well be temporary,...