-The Hindu Experts and activists say the complex problem cannot be prevented merely by monetary handouts meant to retain girls in school Kolkata: Dipali, Manju and Sahanara (names changed) were all beneficiaries of West Bengal’s most talked about conditional cash transfer scheme, Kanyashree. However, despite being beneficiaries of the scheme, which according to the State government has 56.09 lakh beneficiaries so far, these three young women were trafficked between 2016-18. Of the three trafficking...

-The Indian Express October-December 2018 is also the second consecutive quarter where growth in gross value added (GVA) from agriculture has been lower in nominal than in real terms. The country’s farm sector output may have grown by just 2.7 per cent year-on-year in October-December 2018, the lowest in 11 quarters. But what should worry the NDA government more than the low increase in “real” terms (i.e. at constant prices) is...

-The Hindu GUWAHATI: The Indian Army, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Border Security Force (BSF) have never had a problem counting these soldiers as their own and deploying them to protect the country’s borders from the frozen reaches of the Siachen glacier to militancy hit Kashmir or to combat home-grown insurgents. But these battle-hardened men from a western Assam village have struggled for years to overcome a bigger threat...

-The Hindu A basic income scheme will deliver benefits to the poor only if it comes on top of public services The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) is gaining ground globally. It has supporters among the political left and right, and among proponents as well as opponents of the free-market economy. A UBI requires the government to pay every citizen a fixed amount of money on a regular basis and...

-The Indian Express Indian statistical system can withstand political pressures. Legislation and public scrutiny can strengthen it further. One unfortunate fallout of the recent controversy regarding the non-publication of the labour force survey report by the National Sample Survey Organisation has been the questions raised on the autonomy and independence of the Indian official statistical system. As reported in this newspaper, the possibility of junking the survey report in favour of...