-CivilSocietyOnline.com New Delhi: The 100-day Accountability Yatra across Rajasthan led by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) has had an impact. The state government has issued orders to re-verify all one million pensions that had been stopped, including the 688,875 pensions that had been cancelled. From December 2015 to March this year the yatra had travelled to 33 districts in Rajasthan to assess how government schemes were functioning, find out people’s grievances...

-The Hindu Business Line The PMUY scheme, under which the poor get subsidised LPG connection, addresses an urgent need. At the same time, it can turn out to be a political masterstroke for the BJP, write Richa Mishra and Debabrata Das The kitchen has always played an important role in Indian politics. Leaders across political parties have cooked their electoral fortunes with the kitchen as the integral ingredient. While some distributed highly...

-The Financial Express The government’s move to roll out the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) from the ongoing kharif season has got a boost with 18 agriculturally critical states, including Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Odisha and Maharashtra, having floated tenders to identify insurers who will offer the scheme to farmers. According to agriculture ministry data, Rajasthan has completed the bidding process for identifying insurance companies...

-Frontline The inability to resolve pressing problems with respect to the production, distribution and availability of food is one of the important failures of the entire economic reform process. IN the fateful month of July 1991, when the devaluation of the Indian rupee presaged the introduction of a whole series of liberalising economic reforms, agriculture was very far from the minds of most policymakers and commentators. The immediate focus was on...

-The Hindu The audit has also found substantial systemic problems with the Direct Benefit Transfer in LPG scheme, called Pahal by the government. The Centre claims it would end up saving almost Rs. 22,000 crore in the financial years of 2014-15 and 2015-16 since launching its two-pronged approach on cooking gas subsidy — introducing direct bank transfers of the subsidy and asking better off consumers to voluntarily give up theirs. However, a CAG...