-The Telegraph Jaipur: Before the cash flows, check the flush. The BJP-ruled state has linked hikes for rural staff and loans for poor farmers to having "functioning toilets" at home, with a senior official claiming the move is a first in the country. The order was issued yesterday and covers all government employees, including non-gazetted ranks like clerks, accountants, secretarial hands and anganwadi workers - who provide basic healthcare to mothers and toddlers...

-The Indian Express During the election campaign, the BJP had promised a 50 per cent profit margin on minimum support prices to farmers. But over the past year, the optimism of farmers has turned to despair. Since the parliamentary elections, basmati paddy prices have fallen by 35 per cent and cotton by 25 per cent. The era of cooperative federalism notwithstanding, the Centre practically decreed that states not announce a crop...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court has ruled that an MLA or MP who enters into a business contract with the government stands automatically disqualified, upholding the disqualification of BJP legislator Bajrang Bahadur Singh who won the 2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections from Pharenda constituency. The apex court rejected Singh's argument that the disqualification would arise only if a contractor having a subsisting contract contests an election, not when a legislator...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The BJP-led NDA government showed great speed in promulgating an ordinance to push through the land acquisition act, but an investigation by HT reveals that thousands of hectares of land acquired by the government is lying unused in several states. Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh top the list of states where land acquired even decades ago has not been industrialised. In the past 50 years, for instance, the...

-The Hindu What makes public policy exciting and potentially inventive is the contested nature of the public sphere. It is anchored in a diversity of perspectives which challenges the dominance of one subject. India is a country full of paradoxes. The elite in the country are forward-looking; they emphasise the need for reskilling but they conduct all this with backward-looking institutions. An acute observer once said: "we want to be [a] knowledge...