-The Hindu Multiple bank visits, repeated rejections and biometric errors mar payment system, says study. For most rural workers dependent on the Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), their labour does not end at the work site. According to a study by LibTech India released on Wednesday, many of them are forced to make multiple trips to the bank, adding travel costs and income losses, and face repeated rejections of...

-Newsclick.in The journalist claims no action will be taken against his attackers as they belong to the ruling BJP. Lucknow: A senior journalist working with a local daily in Uttar Pradesh’s Lalitpur region was beaten up publicly and threatened allegedly by a local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and his sons while returning from work. Police have lodged a complaint against five people including the BJP leader. Journalist Vinay Tiwari, a resident of...

-TheWire.in In 2018, farmers, who had been denied insurance claims after the Agriculture Insurance Company of India refunded their premiums, filed a PIL before the Rajasthan high court. Jaipur: After almost three years of legal battle against a public sector insurance company and a state-run co-operative bank that arbitrarily denied them insurance claims under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), farmers in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur have finally received their share of claims...

-The Telegraph The government has not institutionalized SAUs which are at times intimidated when it comes to accessing data on various programmes The auditing agility of government programmes seems to have gained strength. After the recent floods in Assam, the state planned to carry out a social audit of relief measures to look into corruption and bribery. This is the first time that any government is trying to reinforce a social audit...

-Down to Earth The time to put off the inevitable question about human relationship to nature is long past. Our assumption that we can control and modify nature without repercussions is a fallacy Lofty mountains that touch the azure skies, gentle hills clothed in dense tropical forests and evergreen valleys — the Western Ghats nurture a variety of ecosystems not found in any other part of the world. Spread over 164,280 square kilometres,...