-Livemint.com Pulses use less water per unit crop and also address hidden hunger The severe drought across India should hopefully help focus attention on the overuse of water in agriculture. A data analysis by Roshan Kishore in this newspaper last week showed that the average water footprint for five major crops—rice, wheat, maize, sugarcane and cotton—is far higher than global averages. At the root of the problem is a policy framework that...

-Press release from Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms   The problem of judicial delays has recently gained public attention in light of the impassioned appeal by the Chief Justice of India to the Government, at the Joint Conference of Chief Ministers and Chief Justices on 24 April 2016, to increase the strength of judges and clear all pending files relating to judicial appointments. The Chief Justice of India also appealed to...

-The Hindu It is the Supreme Court and not Parliament that has found time to pay attention to serious issues of drought relief and mitigation for hundreds of millions of Indians Irony. This one word captures our response to the ongoing nationwide drought in more ways than one. We have woken up to the reality of drought a full six months after the end of monsoon. After waking up, we focus on...

-BBC French economist Thomas Piketty says there is still a "huge" gap in data about income tax in India. Official figures just released show only 1% of Indians paid tax in 2013, while 2% filed a tax return. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that publishing the data was a "big step towards transparency and informed policy-making". But Mr Piketty told the BBC the data was too thin to draw significant conclusions about levels of...

It seems that not only civil society activists, but even the poor and marginalized themselves are not happy with the Centre’s social welfare policies. Following the recent protest by 150 eminent persons regarding failure of the NDA Government to take-up urgent measures for employment generation and ensuring food, nutrition & drinking water security in the backdrop of severe drought in roughly 1/3rd of Indian districts (please click here to access),...