-The Financial Express While the Central Statistical Organisation has estimated “agriculture and allied services” to grow 4.1% in FY17, Niti Aayog member Ramesh Chand expects the growth rate to be a handsome 7%. Chand spoke to FE’s Prasanta Sahu and Sandip Das on critical factors that need to be addressed to ensure at least 4% annual growth over the next 15 years. * How do you foresee the direction of the agricultural...

-The Indian Express Demonetisation shows India’s social welfare measures like MGNREGS to be worryingly patchy Following the announcement of demonetisation, reports of its devastating impact on informal sector workers, farmers and migrants began to pour in from across the country. Seeking evidence on two questions — do social security measures work in the face of such an economic shock, and do these programmes themselves face disruption because of demonetisation — we conducted...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has made it very risky for any organisation to publish a survey on alleged corruption in lower judiciary. The court said on Tuesday that the law permitted one or many trial courts to make a reference to a high court to launch contempt proceedings against those responsible for the embarrassing findings. This ruling came in an 11-year-old case filed by Transparency International India...

-The Telegraph After the third general elections held in 1962, the scholar-statesman, C. Rajagopalachari, wrote a fascinating, if now forgotten, essay on the imperfections of our young democracy. "The Indian electorate", remarked Rajaji, "suffers from well-known defects from which Western democracies are relatively free. The Indian voters are in great measure poor and vulnerable to bribery: even a day's expense for food serves to buy a large number of the poor...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A pleasant surprise awaits you the next time you visit a city police station with a complaint. Instead of a grumpy, disinterested policeman, you are likely to have a smart young woman to hear you out and direct you on how to go about registering a complaint. In an image makeover bid, police commissioner Amulya Patnaik has appointed women public facilitation officers who would be the...