-The Telegraph New Delhi: Parliamentarians, even those from the BJP, have been dragging their feet for the second year in a row over adopting villages in their constituencies (or states) under the Pradhan Mantri Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana. Over a quarter into this fiscal, only 40 of the 788 MPs have identified gram panchayats for adoption under the programme, which mandates them to develop these villages into "model villages" for others to...

-The Hindu Govt. still hopeful of achieving 100 lakh metric tonnes target Chennai: Even as it predicted that the severe unprecedented drought witnessed in the State during 2016-17 “may affect the foodgrain production over the next two years,” the Tamil Nadu government appears hopeful of achieving the target of 100 lakh metric tonnes in agricultural production during 2017-18. Listing out various policies and strategies for agro-ecological intensification during 2017-18, the State government, in...

-Business Standard What is primarily required is political and administrative will for effective delivery of services Agantuk (The Stranger) was Satyajit Ray’s last film. The film revolves around the return of an old man, Manomohan Mitra, to India after 35 years. Manmohan had spent all his life with Adivasis from across the world and has a take on civilisation and progress that is at odds with the popular urban narrative of it....

-GovernanceNow.com The cost of maintaining our 5.3 million stray cattle comes to about Rs 30,115 core per year A lot of debate that we witness in the media on the cattle question these days suffer from the disease of speculative utopian imagination of a ‘cow-nation’ and relentless abuses for those beef-eating ‘others’.   Political debates over the question of our bovine stock has mostly been heavily polarising and mindlessly simplistic, notwithstanding exceptions like veteran...

-PTI MUMBAI: Mumbai city and its suburbs are home to as many as 813 farmers on loan waiver list, a figure which has "surprised" Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis who has ordered a scrutiny before sanctioning the waivers. These farmers figure in the list of probable beneficiaries eligible for benefits under the Rs 34,000-crore loan waiver scheme+ announced by the state government last month. The Mumbai city and its suburbs are urbanised areas,...