-The Indian Express The Niti Aayog's report, submitted before the United Nations, acknowledges that anti-poverty programmes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) helped weaker sections of the society. Vindicating the UPA government’s stand on pulling people out of poverty, India’s Voluntary National Review Report on the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals to the United Nations has said that sustained growth of 8.3 per cent from 2004-05 to 2011-12,...

-HuffingtonPost.in What the dissolving of Skill India’s ambitious targets says about India’s tryst with jobless growth. The recent figures released by the Labour Bureau's Quarterly Economic Survey have pointed to a rather dangerous trend in terms of employment for the country. According to the latest government data, job creation for the nine months running up to December 2016 for the eight labour-intensive sectors of the economy was at an abysmally low 2.31...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Education may be priceless, but the promise of a degree has seen parents across India foot large bills. Those from the rural and urban pockets of southern states spend the most, largely sign up at a private university and finance their children's dream of a technical education. On average, higher education accounts for 15.3% of the total household expenditure in rural and 18.4% in urban areas....

-The Telegraph Bhopal: The turbaned, white-haired, kurta-dhoti-wearing "Tauji" figures are there too, but one outstanding feature of the current farmer agitation in Madhya Pradesh are its jeans-clad, smartphone-wielding spearheads. If the veteran "Kakkaji" Shiv Kumar Sharma is the public face of the movement, which lacks a central leadership, much of the spadework is being done by a band of young, bilingual, stats-savvy and largely apolitical agriculture graduates. Their leader Kedar Sirohi, who is...

-Livemint.com The BJP government, which came to power on the promise of creating 20 million jobs per year, has not yet recognized the gravity of the situation The Central Statistical Office (CSO) has released the full-year growth estimates for 2016-17. These had been much awaited given the uncertainty over the impact of demonetization. These were on expected lines, with fourth quarter growth in gross value added (GVA) in 2016-17 declining to 5.6%...