-The Indian Express As the Modi government completes three years, here are three potentially game-changing steps it could now take to harness the sector’s unrealised potential Amidst the predictable tidal wave of opinion pieces to mark the Narendra Modi government’s third anniversary, one little event last week squeezed its way into the inside pages of a few newspapers. This was a call for a “farm strike” in Maharashtra from June 1,...

-The Indian Express We have been numbed by a series of lies, myths and fictions about the project. India is at risk of becoming a surveillance state, with faint resistance from libertarians, intellectuals, political parties, the media, or the Supreme Court. Very soon, almost everyone will have an Aadhaar number, seeded in hundreds of databases. Most of these databases will be accessible to the government without invoking any special powers. Permanent surveillance...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...

-Livemint.com While initial monsoon forecast bodes well for the season that accounts for over 70% of annual rainfall, IMD also predicts of 50% chance of weak El Nino formation from Sept New Delhi: India’s annual monsoon forecast sends social media into overdrive and is splashed across newspapers. This year’s outlook has some analysts warning that weather watchers may be disappointed. India is set for a normal June to September monsoon, with rainfall...

-TheHoot.org Maharashtra’s farm daily Agrowon offered a counter to the SBI chief, the RBI governor, and English newspapers critical of the UP farm loan waiver. The Marathi agriculture daily Agrowon has criticized both the RBI governor Urjit Patel and State Bank of India’s Arundhati Bhattacharya  who have objected to the farm  loan waiver in Uttar Pradesh and similar demands elsewhere. The paper’s line is quite different from that of the mainstream English...