Keep up-to-date with all that is happening in welfare policy with this curated selection of news – Policy Buzz – published every fortnight.

Policy News

• A welfare fund board to provide pension to workers registered for MGNREGS and the state’s urban job guarantee scheme was launched by the Kerala government. 
• Schemes under the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) were approved for continuation by the Centre with an outlay of Rs 12,882 crore for the balance period of the 15th FC (2022-23 to 2025-26). 
• The Aspirational Block Programme (ABP), aimed at improving performance of blocks lagging on various development parameters, was launched by the Centre.
• A 30 per cent horizontal reservation to women of Uttarakhand for state government jobs was approved by the state government. 
• Setting up of a national level Multi-state cooperative export society was approved by the Centre under the Multi State Cooperative Societies (MSCS) Act, 2002.
• Draft guidelines on the preliminary assessment of whether certain minors can be tried as adults under law in particular cases, under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act was released by National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR).
• The Census of the country, scheduled to take place in 202, has been pushed to 2024-25.

Health and Nutrition 

• The new integrated food security scheme was named Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana (PMGKAY).
• A new system to measure and grade performance of hospitals empaneled under Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY scheme was introduced by the National Health Authority (NHA).

Education

• The Draft University Grants Commission (Setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India) Regulations, 2023 was released. Access the draft regulations here.
• The set benchmarks for universities and autonomous colleges were released by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), in a step towards transparency.

Sanitation

• The first All India Annual States’ Ministers Conference on “Water Vision@2047” was held in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.

Other News

• The Global Risks Report 2023 was released by the World Economic Forum. According to the report, the top five risks identified by the Executive Opinion Survey for India were digital inequality, geopolitical contestation of resources, cost-of-living crisis, debt crises, and natural disasters and extreme weather events.

Also Read: Immunisation and Child Nutrition Outcomes, Is India’s Performance Stagnating?