-The Hindu Chief Justice Misra asks why people preferring anonymity are also compelled to part with their personal data to access services. The government has assured the Supreme Court that Aadhaar is not a “fly-by-night effort to score some brownie points” and personal data collected from millions of people is safe from breach in storage facilities barricaded behind five-feet thick walls. Appearing before a Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak...

-Livemint.com The only way to solve the farmers’ problem is to make entry to other sectors attractive by creating employment opportunities, and to make it easy to exit farming Farmers have a bad romance with the Indian polity. On the one hand, India loves, even worships, these farmers. On the other, Indian policymakers create the most impossible regulatory environment for the agricultural sector, trapping farmers in a low-income, low-productivity occupation. The latest...

-Economic and Political Weekly The historical review of growth of agriculture in Punjab shows that ignoring basic research and hierarchical domination in research and policy formulation led to the crisis we see today. Two measures can help improve the situation in the long run. Basic and fundamental research will be intrinsic to ameliorate the current problems and for future agricultural growth. The existing agricultural research and policy formulation system should be...

-The Hindu Girls won’t marry into any family from Gudatipally in Telangana that is about to be submerged GUDATIPALLY (Telangana): Apart from the usual challenges of making a decent living, young men from Gudatipally village in Telangana’s Siddipet district are faced with a unique problem: they cannot find girls to marry. The reason? None of them have a convincing answer to a simple question from the father of the bride: ‘Where will...

-The Hindu Business Line Eleven years since its inception, the State’s farmer’s debt relief commission has quietly eased the burden of debt on poor farmers, and grown to be a model worth emulating Earlier this week 35,000 debt-ridden farmers coursed through Maharashtra, walking 180 km on blistered soles, to converge at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan demanding freedom from debt and fair compensation for their produce. As the government scrounged for solutions, it could’ve...