-The Hindu Business Line BusinessLine goes to villages, including those visited in 2014, to understand the progress of the ambitious National Optical Fibre Network. Unused infrastructure and low awareness tell a story of missed links In one corner of the Ramnagar village panchayat office, in Panisagar block of Tripura, is a defunct four-year-old computer. The machine, connected with a 10 mbps broadband line was supposed to bring digital services to this remote...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In a move that could significantly bring down prices of expensive medicines, a high-level committee has recommended capping of trade margins for costly drugs at 35% of MRP (maximum retail price). The recommendations - part of a report submitted by an inter-ministerial committee - have been put in the public domain by the Department of Pharmaceuticals, inviting comments on the suggestions. The committee was set up...

-The Indian Express The budget is an opportunity for government to address the simmering discontent and disillusion in rural India. The first advance estimates of GDP growth, at 2011-12 constant prices, put the growth for FY16 at 7.6 per cent over the previous year. This is the highest growth rate in the first four years of the forgotten 12th Five-Year Plan. No wonder this makes the Narendra Modi-led NDA government somewhat...

-TheHansIndia.com Agriculture is intertwined with soil, plant and human beings. In shaping the research, how much attention was paid to these three components? There is a need to reassess or evaluate the institute, whether it has retained the virtues of the pioneers who started it Improvements in farming could be traced in certain regions of the world, where agriculture has become prime occupation of life. Hence, the struggle and labours of few...

-FirstPost.com Even as the Narendra Modi government has been making claims that India’s rural economy has gained pace under his rule, empirical evidence suggests that the health of country’s rural economy may not have improved much on account of declining or stagnant income levels. The situation, experts say, is unlikely to change in the near future as there are low chances of a revival in rural income generation. A survey by brokerage...