-Financial Express Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s road building scheme for rural India could also hold a key towards uplifting farm economy. FM in her budget announcement said that the centre will “encourage” state governments if they implement reforms for agriculture. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s road building scheme for rural India could also hold a key towards uplifting farm economy. Under the third phase of PMGSY (Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana), the government...

-Newsclick.in Punjab is industrialised and its agriculture is mechanised. The state is in the grip of a downturn which has hurt the migrant poor most. The Union Budget is the talk of the town, but the economic downturn is not. The prevailing economic situation has hurt all sectors of the business and economy. One symptom of the downturn is that unemployment has broken a 45-year record. Even if these facts are known,...

-India Water Portal How can India change the game on groundwater management to deal with its overexploited aquifers?. After independence, India was largely food insecure but post Green Revolution around the 1970s, foodgrain production increased manifold consequently reducing food insecurity and poverty in the country, in spite of rapid population growth. Its ability to achieve targeted results was largely dependent on the explosion of groundwater abstraction mechanisms like tubewells. Groundwater development continued...

-The Hindu Citizens should not be asked to provide the same information more than once to government agencies In June 2014, the Modi government set out to change how the government worked. At that time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in a meeting of Union Secretaries about “reforming the public service delivery system and bridging the governance deficit” by introducing “self-certification” in place of “affidavits”. That event revealed his enthusiasm and commitment...

-Newslaundry.com It’s a repository of public datasets on Indian agriculture and socioeconomic indicators and, going forward, on financial inclusion and rural development. Data, they say, is the new oil. It undergirds much of the modern economy and, increasingly, the polity. There’s hardly a socioeconomic sector that big data doesn’t drive today, from the cutting edge of scientific research and technology to the mundane chore of buying groceries. The sheer volume of...