-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...

-Down to Earth Telangana and Andhra Pradesh could take cue from the state government on reducing number of heat stroke deaths In May, 1998 when I was travelling in Odisha, hospitals reported 2,042 deaths due to heat stroke across the state, right from the coastal cities to western regions. A doctor posted at a government hospital in the coastal town of Kendrapara said, “I have counted more deaths than births in a week....

-Business Standard Modi's flagship programme faces an uphill task of total irrigation One of the major pre-poll promises of the Narendra Modi government has been his idea of 'per drop more crop', which, in other words, means an extensive network of canals and irrigation facilities for farming. Pradhan Mantri Sinchaee Yojana, initially under the ministry of water resources, got transferred to the department of agriculture and its nomenclature was changed to the Pradhan...

-The Hans India Warangal: Hunger and starvation coupled with denial of rights provide a fertile ground for the growth of Left Wing Extremism (LWE). The flustered forest-dwellers of the four districts – Adilabad, Karimnagar, Warangal and Khammam — who had been struggling against the might of the State, represented by a despotic forest department, appears to be losing their direction for the means of livelihood as the Forest Rights Act remained a ‘paper...

-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,...