-Deccan Herald Many of India's agricultural practices have barely changed in decades. Reform is long overdue. Nearly a quarter of a century after India launched its first big liberalising reforms in 1991, setting off a new spurt of growth, one area of the country’s economy remains hardly touched: farming. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a 24-hour, state-run television channel for farmers in May, but has fostered no public debate about how to improve...

-Business Standard Nations below a level of per-capita GDP representing a peaking point could be allowed to expand total emissions The world's climate change negotiators will meet again in December in Paris. The good news is that all countries, including developing countries, have agreed to announce their "intended nationally determined contributions" (INDCs). The bad news is that they are nowhere near an agreement on action by individual countries that could limit global...

-The Hindu Huge subsidy of 5 percentage points being leveraged. Pointing to a possible diversion of subsidised funds meant for farmers to non-agricultural uses, a research paper by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) has found that the crop loans extended in India are in fact close to exceeding the total expenditure on farm sector inputs. In 2012-13, the aggregate short-term credit — provided primarily to finance the purchase...

-Tehelka The country has egg on its face but not in its diet, as the Global Hunger Index reveals acute malnutrition Swachh Bharat Mission, if implemented in a holistic fashion, holds the key to curbing not only the problem of diarrhoeal deaths for which India holds the world record, but also malnutrition. However, the World Toilet Summit, which was held in the national capital this year as part of the Mission, was...

-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...