-PTI Mumbai: In controversial remarks, BJP MP Gopal Shetty has attributed farmers’ suicides to a “fashion” and “trend” to end lives. The remarks come at a time when Maharashtra is reeling under an agrarian crisis with 124 farmers committing suicide in the state since January. “Not all farmers’ suicides happen due to unemployment and starvation. A fashion is going on. A trend is on,” Shetty, who represents north Mumbai, said after an...

-Livemint.com The Supreme Court has asked RBI to submit the information within six weeks New Delhi: The Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday asked the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to furnish details of companies that have defaulted on Loans amounting to more than Rs.500 crore in sealed covers within six weeks. The court made the central bank a party to a 2005 case related to bad Loans advanced to a few companies...

-The Indian Express The budget is an opportunity for government to address the simmering discontent and disillusion in rural India. The first advance estimates of GDP growth, at 2011-12 constant prices, put the growth for FY16 at 7.6 per cent over the previous year. This is the highest growth rate in the first four years of the forgotten 12th Five-Year Plan. No wonder this makes the Narendra Modi-led NDA government somewhat...

-Down to Earth The debt in rural households is higher, even though their total assets are lesser than urban households   A new survey by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) shows that rural households have higher debts than their urban counterparts. At the same time, an urban household owns more than double the asset than that of a rural household. A rural household, on an average, owned assets of Rs 10...

-The Indian Express We have turned our back to the intense food and drinking water distress across states India has transformed spectacularly in innumerable ways in the last two decades. One of the least noted changes is in the way the country — governments, the press and people — respond to drought and food scarcities. Back in the late-1980s, many states across India were reeling under back-to-back droughts for three consecutive years, not...