-The Hindu Business Line At an organic market in Odisha, middle-class consumers get to interact with the producers of their food and appreciate traditional knowledge systems One Sunday morning in January, I visited an organic produce market located amidst dense bougainvillea creepers and rows of trees, on the grounds of the six-decade-old Christian Hospital in Bissamcuttack, a town in western Odisha’s Rayagada district. In policy and public imagination, Odisha, particularly its western districts...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Twenty-three bridges and tunnels on national highways (NHs) are over 100 years old, of which 17 require rehabilitation or major maintenance. As many as 123 other bridges in the country require immediate attention and 6,000 are structurally "distressed". These are some of the findings of a analysis conducted by the Union road transport and highways ministry under its Indian Bridge Management System (IBMS) project, India's first-ever...

-The Hindu The long-term benefits of GST are clear — the challenge is to quickly address the short-term obstacles The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is in force from today. The reform, touted as a “game changer” and the “reform of the century”, was deemed worthy of a launch on the midnight of June 30 in the Central Hall of the Parliament. Indeed, one is reminded of the famous speech by Pandit...

-The Indian Express The Niti Aayog's report, submitted before the United Nations, acknowledges that anti-poverty programmes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) helped weaker sections of the society. Vindicating the UPA government’s stand on pulling people out of poverty, India’s Voluntary National Review Report on the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals to the United Nations has said that sustained growth of 8.3 per cent from 2004-05 to 2011-12,...

-The Hindu A big push on private investment is needed. But social harmony is also a prerequisite for faster growth The National Income numbers for 2016-17 have been released. What do they convey? What do they hold for the immediate future? Briefly, this is the picture. Recent revisions in the Index of Industrial Production and Wholesale Price Index do not alter the annual growth rates for the recent years. The differences are in...