-The Telegraph New Delhi: The government's spending on the rural job scheme increased 10 per cent in the last fiscal despite a matching decline in the number of beneficiaries because of deletion, challenging claims that weeding out bogus card-holders helped cut down on expenditure and pointing to the lack of jobs in rural areas. After verification, the government struck off the names of 1.62 crore job card-holders under the Mahatma Gandhi National...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: Giving direct income support (DIS) to farmers — similar to what Telangana recently launched — may be a better option than the price deficiency payment (PDP) scheme or higher minimum support price (MSP) to address farm distress, according to a new study. Paying higher MSP based on cost-plus pricing would lead to market distortion. PDP schemes such as Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana (BBY), which was in force...

-The Times of India GURGAON: The Haryana government has kicked off a row by circulating an admission form in government and private schools across the state that seeks to know if the student suffers from genetic disorders or whether the parents are engaged in any “unclean occupation”. The form with 100 sub-heads given to students across the state, including Gurgaon, also seeks Aadhaar and PAN numbers, religion, caste, income and bank account...

-The Hindu Amid criticism from SC/ST panel, experts say project must continue Now in her late twenties, Veeramma Selvan of Thekkekadampara tribal hamlet in Sholayur gram panchayat of Attappady has reasons to believe that her gods have stopped smiling. It was in January last year that she lost her five-month-old, underweight son Balu — her fourth child — allegedly due to milk aspiration. (a medical condition in which the mother's milk goes...

-The Hindu Asks party MPs to spend a night each in villages where SC/STs make up majority Four days after the Union government filed a review petition in the Supreme Court on its orders concerning the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday asked BJP MPs to reach out to villages where 50% or more of the population belonged to these communities. He was...