-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre's plan to install nearly a million solar-powered water pumps for irrigation in the next three years through a 30 per cent government subsidy appears fiscally unrealistic, energy researchers cautioned on Thursday and called for alternative financing strategies. The researchers with the New Delhi-based Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW) have estimated that the 30 per cent subsidy on solar irrigation pumps would cost the government...

-Human Rights Watch Reform Laws Choking Freedom of Expression, Association New York: The Indian government failed to stop or credibly investigate vigilante attacks against minority religious communities during 2017, Human Rights Watch said today, releasing its World Report 2018. Many senior leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) publicly promoted Hindu supremacy and ultra-nationalism at the expense of fundamental rights for all Indians. Extremist Hindu groups, many claiming to be affiliated...

-FoodFirst.org Over the past seven years, institutions (such as the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization) have increasingly turned to the rubric of 'climate-smart agriculture' to tout the objectives of increased productivity, greater resilience, and a reduction in emissions. Though climate-smart agriculture's objectives are laudable, the latest Policy Brief of FoodFirst entitled 'What's Smart About Climate-smart Agriculture?' by Marcus Taylor explores how the framework has Been used, at times,...

- The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy Aadhaar's principal goals were to end fraud and reach welfare to the poorest. But in practice it has achieved neither. The claimed elimination of bogus cards has Been found to be exaggerated. On the other hand, the insistence on the Aadhaar card has led to the brutal exclusion from welfare of the very poor and the homeless — for reasons such as...

-The Indian Express The dairies are blaming the current situation on the crash in international skimmed milk powder (SMP) prices Puntamba (Maharashtra): Since early September, Nitin Dhanvate’s dairy farm business has gone for a toss. Till around then, the 33-year-old from this village in Ahmednagar district’s Rahata taluka was receiving Rs 28 per litre for the milk containing 3.5 per cent fat and 8.5 per cent SNF (solids-not-fat) he was supplying to...