-Hindustan Times Hyderabad/ Bhubaneswar/ New Delhi: A blazing sun baked large parts of India on Friday with a searing heat wave claiming dozens of lives this summer in a budding El Nino year, while the weather office predicted worse days ahead. The oppressive conditions have killed at least 21 people in the southern state of Telangana as the meteorological department said the mercury would likely shoot up further and advised people to...

-The Hindu Business Line Cut in funds is a major setback: civil society activists New Delhi: Economist Prabhat Patnaik and civil society activist Aruna Roy criticised the Narendra Modi government over various issues on Wednesday. Releasing a report card on the first year of NDA rule, they said the government is not displaying transparency and accountability to the people. Patnaik said all the explanation that the Centre is giving about the increase in...

-Hindustan Times A dominant feature of the first year of Narendra Modi's leadership is the quiet dismantling of India's imperfectly realised framework of welfare and rights, covertly, by stealth.   A declared pro-corporate agenda, such as the land acquisition ordinance, proved politically messy and costly. Therefore, the government resorted instead for an enfeebling of the welfare architecture of the country through a combination of fiscal withdrawals, ignoring even legally mandated obligations.   But this attracted...

-The Hindu Without a head, functioning of Central Information Commission has come to a halt When the Bharatiya Janata Party won by a massive majority in the general election last year, one of the key election promises that brought it to power was transparency and accountability in governance. A year later, many of the electoral promises made on that front remain on paper — the Lokpal Bill and the Grievance Redressal Bill,...

-The Hindu Business Line Agriculture development and food security form the foundation of manufacturing growth. Modi must realise this Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s exhortation ‘Make in India’ would make perfect sense till we realise that by ‘making’ he means manufacturing. But could it be that his focus on manufacturing may come a cropper if we do not ensure that agriculture is placed permanently on a sound footing? The history of the great...