Firstpost Editor's Picks: Budget 2019, Malaal movie review, West Indies' ICC World Cup run; today's must-read stories

Nirmala Sitharaman's maiden Budget is devoid of much-needed big growth stimulus for economy If growth is the yardstick, on a scale of 10, this Budget would have scored six. That said, this Budget was certainly not a non-event, as it carried several interesting proposals that are incremental in nature, consistent with Narendra Modi’s government’s reform agenda. The broader character of the Budget was that of a socialist one, but with a reformist touch. Sitharaman devoted significant time to explain the schemes for the poor. _Malaal_ movie review: Sanjay Leela Bhansali launches his niece and Jaaved Jaaferi's son in a dreary film Malaal is a remake of the Tamil hit 7G Rainbow Colony (2004). K Selvaraghavan, the writer-director of the original, has been duly credited here for the story. Director Mangesh Hadawale and Bhansali himself share the honours for the adapted Hindi screenplay. Bhansali has also given this film its music, which is one of its few positives but that too not to an earth-shattering degree. Child marriages flourish among Muslims in Assam with alleged collusion of court officials, lawyers and ignorant parents Assam’s Dhubri district was in the news when a video of a woman being stripped and tonsured by a mob for filing a police complaint against the marriage of her minor son went viral. A report on child marriages by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights put the rate of such marriages in Assam at 16.7 percent, higher than the national average of 11.9 percent. Another media report pointed out that Assam had registered a 10-fold rise in child marriages in three years, and that the number of such marriages in 2017-18 was 317, while the figure was 32 in 2015-16 and 96 in 2016-17. Chennai water crisis: Way ahead could encompass decentralised sewage treatment, solutions matching pain with gain Apartments and offices across the country are discovering how wonderful a resource their own sewage is. If every bulk user (schools/apartments/hotels/offices) reused their treated sewage, they could cut their water purchases by more than a third. Payback times vary based on current water price paid and recycling technology used — but falls between months to a couple of years. **One-dimensional cricket from West Indies major reason for team's disappointing run in World Cup 2019** West Indies ended their Cricket World Cup 2019 campaign with a win against Afghanistan — and a World Cup goodbye from Chris Gayle — at Leeds on Thursday, but their chances of making the knockout stage of the tournament were over much earlier. When the men in maroon bullied and bashed Pakistan at Nottingham on the last day of May, there was hope that West Indies could be the surprise team of the tournament, but all that came crashing over five weeks of futile cricket that was one-dimensional exposing the weaknesses in the squad.