-The Hindu If it’s the government’s case that NSSO figures are suspect, what has it based policy decisions on? Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said last week, “we definitely have a data crisis,” and blamed academics for creating a “false narrative”. Yet, at the heart of the data crisis in India is the Central government, which has been holding back important data. Most recently, it did...

-Down to Earth RUDRAPUR: In Udham Singh Nagar district, considered the rice bowl of Uttarakhand, thousands of farmers are dependent on groundwater resources for irrigating water-hungry crops such as rice, maize and other kharif crops. Since the past decade, this area has been grappling with intense and rapid depletion of groundwater reserves largely due to over-extraction in the industrial area set up at different cities in the district and the cultivation...

-The Hindu It is shocking that a democratic government is seeking to strengthen the colonial-era Indian Forest Act The Indian Forest Act, 1927 was a remarkable piece of expropriation in the name of conservation. The British government carried out one of the largest land expropriations in history, where the rights to occupy and use forests were transferred from communities with customary and historical property rights to the colonial Central government. The act...

-The Hindu Business Line The former PM added that the economic stimulus that NYAY will provide will further help in fiscal discipline India's nearly $3 trillion economy has the fiscal capacity to absorb the expenditure to fund NYAY, the minimum income support scheme promised by Congress Party, without the need for any new taxes on the middle class, former Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, said. NYAY scheme -- announced by Congress...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The so-called mohalla clinics, or neighbourhood health centres, are an important part of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party’s electoral campaign. AAP had promised 1,000 across Delhi, but opened just 189 till December last year, attributing the failure to start the rest to bureaucratic hurdles. TOI visited eight mohalla clinics in north, east and central Delhi to find that while patients were mostly satisfied with the...