'Should you give a man fish, or teach him how to fish?' 'Lurking hidden in the new bout of welfarism seems to be an admission that the State can't deliver for the poor anything other than cash,' notes T N Ninan.
By April, operational guidelines for the scheme will be finalised and shared with states
As the world awaits the end of the global pandemic, rural Bengal might be witnessing a recession unfolding in bits and pieces. With factories and tea gardens closing down, agricultural income falling and storm Aila ravaging a large part of deltaic West Bengal in 2010, migration gradually became a norm.
'How many Indian parents, still alive, really have documents of, their parents's date and place of birth? Not more than 27% of still alive Indians have got birth certificates,' points out Mohammad Sajjad.
A day after masked goons entered Jawaharlal Nehru University and ran riot, injuring over 36 people with sticks, lathis and hammers, noted economist and professor C P Chandrasekhar resigned from a Narendra Modi government-appointed committee on statistics. The committee was set to hold its first meeting to review India's economic data. In his resignation letter, Professor Chandrasekhar wrote, "I regret to inform you that because of the situation in JNU where I stay, I will be unable to attend tomorrow's meeting." He was also quoted as saying, "The JNU's incident on Sunday has further undermined the faith in the system. It shows that we are now living in a different world and it's hard to work with a government in which you have lost faith."
'The Modi government must create conditions to integrate millions into the rural economy as many migrants are certainly not going to return to live an undignified life,' notes Ramesh Menon.
As of now, just about 10 lakh people, out of the total 40 lakh, who were excluded in the draft of the NRC have submitted applications for inclusion of their names in the list of Assam's citizens.
The construction sector is now India's second-largest employer after agriculture, the trend coinciding with India's high-growth phase and decline in poverty levels
Besides, less than 200 applications have been received by the authorities challenging the inclusion of the names of suspected illegal immigrants in the NRC, a list of Assam's residents, two months after a window was opened for claims and objections.
'Why do you want the tribal communities to come out of the jungles?' 'For development?' 'Why cannot their development take place over there?' 'The Modi government is diluting the Forest Rights Act in the name of industrialisation and Project Tiger.'
News of all that's transpired on and off the football field
Muslim voters in Uttar Pradesh could have voted in significant numbers for the BJP, endorsing its stand on issues like women's rights.
In keeping with the Trusts' objectives, the initiative was underpinned by an attempt to determine how over-nutrition was impacting citizens at a mass scale.
Modi is as divorced from reality as Manmohan Singh. He might want to sound expansive and visionary, but to be credible he must have his feet on the ground and know the reality around him. Instead of delivering irrelevant homilies to small and hence poor farmers, the prime minister should be thinking in terms of creating a huge demand for alternative employment, mainly in the construction sector, and his promised hundred new cities is a capital idea, says Mohan Guruswamy.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday warned Bangladeshis against attacking the minority Hindu community, saying such assaults could have repercussions in neighbouring India.
Hurricane Irma made landfall on Florida's southern islands on Sunday and claimed four lives as millions of people, including thousands of Indian-Americans, evacuated the state.
The renaming of Mewat comes within weeks of an RSS-supported think tank issuing a 'study' about the growing population of Muslims in the Mewat region.
The issue at the core of it is the perceived fear among the locals of getting outnumbered and uprooted by 'others' and eventually losing their identity
'The brutal violence of the UP government's first response to the anti-CAA protests suggests that the BJP will test drive the NPR/NRC in UP, where it has both a massive majority in the assembly and a chief minister whose instinct for Hindutva extremism and whose appetite for punitive policing allows a prime minister as darkly majoritarian as Modi to appear statesman-like,' notes Mukul Kesavan.
'The CAA should be kept in abeyance, without making it a prestige issue.'
'Laying down a clear policy on the future of illegal migrants will dispel anxieties and help in implementing the CAA, NPR and also the NCR,' suggests former Union home secretary Dr Madhav Godbole.
'They are innovating and a new Dalit leadership could be seen at the horizon'
'Our country does not need an NRC. We need to improve our economy which is in a bad condition.'
As many as 82 per cent of child workers in the national capital said that given an opportunity, they would not like to attend school
All the poor people identified by the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 will be eligible for the scheme, officials said, adding that it will be linked to Aadhar but will not be a mandatory condition for availing the benefit.
The states fear they would end up funding both their own scheme as well as the newly-announced National Health Protection Scheme.
'Without it, it is going to be much, much, much, much worse.' 'In the meantime, we really need to work on a sort of war footing, given that it is a natural disaster, provide relief, provide essentials, till we get biological herd immunity, we need to get economic immunity, and also social immunity.'
Beti Bachao Beti Padhao is for protection and education of girl child
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Retail giant Tesco's entry into Indian market has hit a regulatory roadblock.
'The loose use of words like foreigner or Bangladeshis obscures the fact that the post-Partition migration to Assam has been of both Hindus and Muslims.'
The stories of exclusions illustrate so tragically, the need of the hour is to bolster biometrics and 'smart' technologies with something more old-fashioned - the good old fashioned, compassionate human touch, says Geetanjali Krishna.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his first trip to New York as leader of the world's most populous democracy, will draw perhaps the largest crowd ever by a foreign leader on US soil when he takes the stage on Sunday in Madison Square Garden before a crowd forecast to total more than 18,000 people.
Maybe one of the reasons for the party to prefer Gogoi is that he combines administrative and financial acumen that is rare.
In analysing census data from 2007-2011, researchers found that the at-birth sex ratios of Asian Americans are the same as white Americans. Arthur J Pais reports
If things go as planned, the Centre will develop 12 new Lakshadweep islands under its island development programme. But they will limit their access to 'high-end' serious adventure and fun tourists -- those who won't mind spending more than Rs 15,000 for a one-night stay in some of the world's most exotic and unexplored places.
India is experiencing jobless growth and skepticism abounding that the country may not be able to cash in on its demographic bonus
'We eat first, they later; we sit on chairs and they on the floor; we call them by their names and they address us by titles,' writes Tripti Lahiri, author of Maid in India.
'Our children score very high marks, but do not get admission in good colleges. They get top rank, but they do not get jobs because they belong to the so-called forward caste.' 'What can we do when a boy or girl from the community with first rank is considered only at the 6th or 7th position for a government job just because those with reservation get precedence over us?'
'The corporate world and the private sector economy take notice of the monstrous and apartheid like division that exists in our offices. The jobs we so casually take for granted in the upper class have come to us on the back of denial to others,' says Aakar Patel.
States are now gearing up to implement the scheme, integrating it with their own public health insurance plans and tying up the loose ends.
The Union Cabinet is soon likely to take up a bill to provide recognition to transgenders and protect their rights, Lok Sabha was informed on Friday.
