-Business Standard This could help bypass central legislation and break the land Bill deadlock Ten big states, most of those ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its alliance partners, on Wednesday sought to unshackle themselves from the logjam over amendments to the contentious land acquisition Bill, 2013, by proposing to bring their own laws for boosting infrastructure development. At a NITI Aayog meeting to discuss the land Bill (the Right to...

-Hindustan Times With the key Land Acquisition bill stalled by political differences with the Opposition, the Centre may change tack and get states to enact their own land legislation, enabling it to push along the economic reform process.   Finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday that the states that wanted speedy development could take the lead in framing such laws with the Centre's backing, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi said “political considerations”...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: It hasn't washed away the fears of deficit rainfall, but the monsoon's satisfactory performance so far has sharply reduced the possibility of a second consecutive drought in the country this year. In a drought year, average nationwide rainfall is at least 10 per cent below normal. As of now, almost halfway into the rainy season, the monsoon is 2 per cent below average, still within the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) on Thursday got an accreditation from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) - a global multilateral fund that is meant to assist developing and poor countries in taking up their respective mitigation and adaptation measures to fight climate change. Accreditation to the Nabard, means that the national financial institution will act as a channel through which the GCF will...

-The Indian Express SECC opens the door to step away from the poverty line as a criterion for government benefits. The Government of India has just released data from the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011. It is perhaps the most ambitious exercise of this kind ever conducted in human history. The SECC 2011 has three parts: census of rural India, conducted by the Union ministry of rural development (MoRD), census...