-PTI After a making a slow progress, the southwest monsoon is expected to gain momentum and advance further into several parts of drought-hit Maharashtra and central India. “The southwest monsoon has further advanced into remaining parts of coastal Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Gangetic West Bengal, more parts of north interior Karnataka, Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Jharkhand and Bihar,” the India Meteorological Department said. Secretary in the Ministry of Earth Sciences, M Rajeevan, said the last...

-The Economic Times blog Prayers have been answered, monsoon has made landfall in Kerala, close to where Vasco da Gama landed in 1498. Potentially, the impact on political fortunes will be no less. This government has promised to double farm incomes in six years and economists argued that this would be impossible because it would entail a 12% annual growth in incomes; unprecedented globally. Starting from such abysmally low farm income...

-Business Standard If the courts admit the complaint filled by Kerala police against Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, the bottling arm of Coca-Cola India, and its senior executives, this will be the first instance when the stringent provisions of the Scheduled Caste and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act 2015, will be put to test. Legal experts point out that this could also open up "a can of worms" for several disputed...

-The Indian Express Muslims have among the lowest suicide rates in the country at 7. The suicide rate among Dalits in Gujarat and Tripura is nearly 1½ times the overall suicide rate in each state. This emerges from government data collected on suicides across the country based on caste and religion. The data, collected by NCRB in 2014 but never published, were accessed by The Indian Express through RTI. They show the average...

-The Hindu The direction of the wind, intensity of the rain and several other factors go into determining whether a rainy spell qualifies as monsoon. In our eagerness for monsoon to arrive, any long drizzle may make it seem as though the annual rainy season is finally here. But not all rain spells that arrive in June qualify to be monsoon showers. For example, the sudden showers that greeted a parched Chennai...