-The Times of India PATNA: Bihar on Friday became the first state to launch a universal old-age pension scheme in which each person at the age of 60 years and above, irrespective of their financial, family or caste status, will get a sum of Rs 400 per month directly in his/her bank account. In other states, old-age pensions are provided only to the members of either BPL family or SC/ST or widows...

  Initial media reports suggest how timely interventions by various official agencies in Odisha prevented loss of human lives when Cyclone Fani hit that state on 3rd May. However, it is essential to also take into account recent official reports by different agencies, which indicate that the impact of the cyclone has been quite severe. A situation assessment report on the impact of Fani cyclone dated 15th May, 2019, which was released...

-The Indian Express 4 lakh jobs, Rs 4,000-cr per month at stake; Kanpur, Unnao count losses. Kanpur, Unnao: Rizwan Nadri is a self-proclaimed Narendra Modi bhakt. “I credit his government at the Centre for approving a 20 million-litres-per-day (MLD) common effluent treatment plant (CETP), which will give us a new lease of life,” states this 34-year-old owner of Nadri Tanning Industries. His three tanneries are among the 241 in Kanpur’s Jajmau leather...

-The Hindu There are few parallels anywhere else of the state itself producing statelessness in the manner that it is doing in Assam By requiring long-term residents of Assam to prove their citizenship by negotiating a thicket made up of bewildering and opaque rules and an uncaring bureaucracy, the Indian state has for the past two decades unleashed an unrelenting nightmare of wanton injustice on a massive swathe of its most vulnerable...

-Newsclick.in The tragedy of unemployment continues, complemented by a government that has no solution except to fiddle with data. If there was one defining promise by Narendra Modi in the run-up to the 2014 General Elections, it was that he would give one crore jobs every year. Nearly five years down the line, this is what promises to sink him and his government at the Centre. Far from fulfilling this promise, the Modi...