-The Hindu Fund-starved civic body mulls move Chennai: Owing to a severe fund crunch, the Chennai Corporation is now exploring the possibility of reducing the number of Amma canteens in the city. The civic body, which is unable to settle bills of contractors for completed infrastructure projects worth ?700 crore, is likely to reduce the number of canteens from 407 to 200. However, the decision to close many of these canteens has been...

-The Indian Express The decision on compulsory counting of paper trail slips, which was approved by the full Commission before Nasim Zaidi retired as the Chief Election Commissioner on Wednesday, is a response to the demand made by political parties at a meeting held by the EC on May 12. In a bid to further reinforce the credibility of electronic voting machines, the Election Commission (EC) has decided to mandatorily tally...

-DNA Most of Europe avoided the fate of India, because of a very strict feudal law — that of following primogeniture, a system of inheritance by the firstborn (usually the first born son). Karnataka — preceded by UP, Punjab and Maharashtra — is the fourth state to have waived off loans taken by farmers. However, this is not going to be the end of the matter. You are likely to...

-Newsclick.in Forget 50 percent profit over the cost of production, the farmers were forced to sell their produce at well below the minimum support price and the cost of production, pushing them deeper into debt. Farming turning increasingly unviable across vast swathes of India, and the Narendra Modi-led government not delivering on the BJP’s election promise to “make agriculture rewarding” lie behind the massive protests that have rocked several BJP-ruled states in...

-TheWire.in The Indian farmer is not just a poor, helpless victim who deserves a waiver because he cannot pay. The root cause of the debt trap is that his income has not increased with rising expenditure due to state policies. As Punjab joins the list of states to declare farm loan waivers, the political scales are now heavily tilted in favour of this idea. The government of Telangana, followed by Andhra Pradesh,...