-Newsclick.in Over the past three years, prices of farm produce have gone down, pushing farmers into deeper crisis but the govt. has no solution. It is perhaps a symbol of our times, and this govt.’s alienation from the people, that it is totally unconcerned about crashing farm produce prices even though the Prime Minister and his colleagues go on harping on their commitment to double farmers’ INComes. Here is what has happened...

-Hindustan Times Contractual in nature, the lateral entry of experts should not alarm civil services unions. At the same time, it must be ensured that the policy is not misused for political purposes. The government’s decision to recruit 10 senior bureaucrats through lateral entry is, in prINCiple, a bold and long-overdue step. The Indian state apparatus suffers from three key deficiencies. Contrary to the widespread impression that it is bloated, the government...

-Newsclick.in As soon as the monsoon will arrive, there would be a sudden rise in number of encephalitis deaths. Children’s deaths at Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College in Gorakhpur have come back to haunt the Uttar Pradesh government almost a year after a similar INCident – wherein almost 60 infants had died in August last year – created a national uproar. In the same hospital, more than 900 children have lost...

-The Indian Express We have, indeed, entered a regime of “permanent surpluses” in most crops — a reality our policymakers are unable to grasp, stuck as they are in the era of the Essential Commodities Act. If there is one thing that has changed in Indian agriculture in recent times, it is supply response — the ability of farmers to INCrease production when prices go up. Traditionally, the supply curve in most...

-PTI The estimates INClude the direct and indirect cost of violence as well as an economic multiplier New Delhi: Violence cost the Indian economy a whopping USD 1.19 trillion (over Rs 80 lakh crore) last year in constant purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, which amounts to roughly USD 595.4 per person, says a report. The findings are part of the report prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) based on...