-Economic and Political Weekly   The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan should have been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is not to be in this mid-year budget. Vipul Mudgal (vipulmudgal@gmail.com) heads the Inclusive Media for Change project at the Centre...

-The Business Standard States need to create alternative marketing structures for farm produce since middlemen also provide vital services that are otherwise unavailable to the farmer   One of the issues often raised in the context of high food inflation is the pressing need to change the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC), the marketing boards established by state governments. The earlier United Progressive Alliance government had asked the Congress-ruled states to remove fruit...

-The Indian Express The changes also aim to prohibit pregnant women and persons with disabilities from being assigned to machinery-in-motion. In its first major step towards overhauling the country's labour laws, the government on Wednesday cleared long-pending amendments to three critical laws in the sector that would enable a doubling of the overtime limit for workers, exemption for firms employing up to 40 workers from compliance of labour regulations and allow more...

-Economic and Political Weekly Corruption in Indian medicine is back on the front pages. One would think that there has been an abrupt spurt in corrupt practices or a major scandal. Nothing of that sort has happened. However, there have been some interesting developments for the focus to shift back to what is really a very old affliction. This is an update on recent happenings as the entrepreneurial spirit of the...

-The Economic Times The rationale for embedding nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programmes in a development agenda is compelling. And yet, strangely, it has been ignored. Planning and implementation of such programmes require collaborative, consistent and aligned effort across multiple sectors. Currently, we have a myopic vision to pursue narrow agendas. Transformational change requires tackling one of the most obdurate challenges: malnutrition. This blight has a large human impact and a larger economic impact...