Daily Briefing: MGNREGA revamp; Macaulay’s inspiration; Messi in India

🚨 Big Story

Revamp: The Centre may soon finalise a revamp of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), increasing the number of guaranteed employment days to eligible rural households from 100 now to 125. The Union Cabinet is contemplating changing the name of the law itself to Pujya Bapu Rural Employment Guarantee Act, sources in the government told The Indian Express. The proposal comes on the back of an approval process initiated by the government for continuation of the scheme in the Sixteenth Finance Commission awards which will be effective April 1, 2026.

⚡ Only in Express

Thomas Macaulay’s much-maligned Minute on Education that pushed for English-medium, Western-style education, gained inspiration from the founding vision of India’s first ever medical college, which focused on allopathy or the Western medicine. Macaulay wrote his Minute just five days after the commencement of the medical college, as the first ever law member of the Governor-General’s Council of India. This aspect has been overlooked in the debate reignited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent remarks about Macaulay’s impact on India and its subsequent journey. Here’s the full story.

IndiGo flight disruptions: Union Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu, in an interview to The Indian Express, said that though he is satisfied with the progress made in restoring normalcy after IndiGo flight disruptions left thousands stranded at airports, the government will now closely monitor the airline’s operations. Acknowledging that the civil aviation sector needs reforms, keeping passenger interest as priority, he said the challenge is to bring in more aircraft fast. Read the full interview here.

💡 Express Explained

As Delhi’s air quality deteriorates further, a new report, ‘Different Paths to Clean Air: Global Insights for India’s Reform Agenda’, by Sustainable Futures Collaborative (SFC), a New Delhi-based research organisation, shares detailed pathways to improve air quality in India, by examining how other countries addressed their diverse pollution challenges. The researchers – Ishita Srivastava, Arunesh Karkun, and Bhargav Krishna – explain why pollution is a seasonal issue in India, what foreign cities with geographies similar to Delhi did to improve their air quality, and why India is more focused on tackling PM10 and not PM2.5.

✍️ Express Opinion

In our Opinion section today, Manish Sabharwal sheds light on the hard art of entrepreneurship in India, along with the newly-proposed Jan Vishwas Siddhant and the potential as it adopts trust-based deregulation. He writes: “The Jan Vishwas Siddhant will transform ruling into governing and praja into nagrik. It will accelerate non-farm job creation by recognising that entrepreneurship is iterative hypothesis testing, not planning. Freeing entrepreneurs from ijaazat focuses them on koshish (trying).”

🎬 Movie Review

Wondering what to binge-watch this weekend? Well, we’ve got you covered! All hell breaks loose when Kunal Kemmu’s character as a single father brings his child to a conservative Punjabi household in the web series Single Papa. Shubhra Gupta, in her review, writes: “The premise is interesting, and the setting, well-to-do middle-class families in Delhi, is ripe for excavating societal hypocrisies revolving around parenthood, and while it’s at it, hoovering up issues like adoption, women’s rights, and of course, patriarchy. There’s an even weightier idea in here, which challenges the notion that women make better parents, rather than men, as well as that other one, ‘apna khoon toh apna hota hai’.”

That’s all for today. Have a lovely weekend!

Until next time,
Ariba

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