The Karnataka government on Wednesday launched its ambitious initiative to supply 30 kg of rice at Rs 1 to nearly one crore poor families across the state that would entail an outgo of Rs 4,200 crore a year.
This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
A shortfall in LPG supply from Aramco has led to huge booking backlog across states. To meet the backlog, India has asked Abu Dhabi National Oil Company for two additional cargos of LPG, but that may take another 10 days to reach.
In a relief to pharma majors, the Delhi high court today held as "illegal and unsustainable" the Centre's decision to put a ceiling on the price of condoms, including the luxury variety.
According to government's estimates, there are around 110 million APL families in the country, who get 11-25 kg of foodgrain a month.
Opposition members in the Lok Sabha on Monday blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government's policies for the price rise and accused it of ignoring the plight of common people, saying kitchens will soon "see a lockdown" if the Centre does not take corrective measures.
Why is the BJP upset about the dialogues in a Tamil movie, wonders A Ganesh Nadar.
"It is not a crime to be a Hindu. It is not their (Islamic) State."
'If because of El Nino, the monsoon is affected adversely in the current year, naturally it will affect income projections and consequently Budget numbers.'
Tamil Nadu's latest budget offers path-breaking initiatives and major boost for social infrastructure, which other state governments are sure to follow in the coming years, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Experts say the party is undoing what it achieved through MNREGA by targeting beneficiaries
The party finds Uttar Pradesh members of Parliament unaware of govt schemes.
India is also set to achieve the goal of reducing hunger by half and reduce maternal mortality by three quarters.
After Raj Babbar's comment -- that a hearty meal in Mumbai can be bought for Rs 12 -- another Congress leader on Thursday claimed that just Rs 5 was sufficient for a meal in Delhi.
Ayurvedic doctor-turned-politician Raman Singh was on Thursday sworn in as chief minister of Chhattisgarh for the third consecutive term.
"There has been a 0.05 percentage points decline in the share of allocation for child budget to the Union Budget from 2.35 per cent (2022-23 BE) to 2.30 per cent (2023-24 BE).
Implementing the Food Ordinance is the bigger challenge and there are many provisions of the National Food Security Bill which need to be expanded and strengthened.
Even in this season of political-peeing-on-lampposts, Rahul Gandhi's statement takes the cake (with due apologies to another astute observer of poverty, the much late Mary Antoinette).
The government had last year excluded those with an annual income of more than Rs 10 lakh from LPG subsidy
As of last year, India had 1.3 hospital beds per 1,000 people.
Whether it was the MGNREGS or the NFSA or the Aadhaar-based DBT scheme for cash transfer, the Modi government has built on the basic architecture created by the Singh government. Policy makers in the Modi government, instead of discarding them as products of the previous political regime, worked on them, expanded their scope and reach, and used new tools to improve their performance, explains A K Bhattacharya.
Why did Karnataka's economic prosperity fail to influence the nature of electoral promises made by political parties in the run-up to the assembly elections? asks A K Bhattacharya.
Attorney General K K Venugopal told a bench headed by Justice Bobde that the Constitution (103 amendment) Act, 2019 granting 10 per cent reservation to EWS is intended to uplift around 200 million people who are still below the poverty line.
"The government is wrong. It is wrong because it is clueless," Chidambaram said. "It is unable to look for the obvious clues because it is stubborn and mulish in defending its catastrophic mistakes like demonetisation, flawed GST, tax terrorism, regulatory overkill, protectionism, and centralised control of decision-making in the Prime Minister's Office."
Aadhaar is a creation of the previous Congress-led government.
He added that the rival parties had tried to project the Bharatiya Janata Party as communal and therefore "untouchable" but the people realised that the party stood for their welfare.
The high-speed train line in a region already well-connected by rail, road and airways may have to struggle to stay viable
Every student of Classes 9 and 10 will receive Rs 2,200 and that of Classes 11 and 12 Rs 7,500 as scholarships, said the manifesto, which was released by Prasad in Ranchi, in the presence of Chief Minister Raghubar Das, Union Tribal Minister Arjun Munda and BJP's state unit president Laxman Gilua.
Targeting parties who are opposing the note ban, he claimed some people are upset as his decision has struck the "ring leader of thieves".
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Ayushman Bharat health care scheme is just a slogan for the moment, it is the state's Mukhyamantri Amrutum health assurance scheme which is a comforting reality for many.
In case MGNREGA is expanded, officials said the total expenditure on farming-related works could reach up to 80 per cent of MGNREGA budget, as against the current 67 per cent.
Arvind Panagariya speaks about climate change, globalisation and India's economy.
'I worry that the suffering of these people might be as invisible as the people themselves,' observes Geetanjali Krishna.
'There is no safe spot in Gaza.' 'Israeli airstrikes are targeting everything, everywhere.' 'Hospitals, mosques, churches, schools have been bombed. These are places where people were taking shelter.'
The annual fee has been hiked from Rs 90,000 to Rs two lakh.
For all its claims to economic glory, the majority of India's population lives vulnerable lives, a situation that has only worsened over the past 15 years, to the extent that the government now fears to release economic data or even conduct a proper Census, notes Rathin Roy.
The government on Friday refrained from releasing the caste-based data in its first Socio Economic and Caste Census released in eight decades and maintained that it was concerned with economic data which will help in effective implementation of its programmes.
While the rich are buying expensive luxury vehicles in Patna, the poor continue to suffer. The pandemic, discovers M I Khan, has cast new light on the stark economic divide in the capital city of Bihar, India's poorest state.
