-Hindustan Times Farmers across India are battling a steep fall in wholesale vegetable prices and are forced to discard their produce as a nationwide cash crunch following the scrapping of high-value banknotes hurts demand. The crash in wholesale prices comes at a bad time for farmers, who reaped a bumper crop and were hoping for good returns to make up for losses induced by two straight drought years. Please click here to read...

-Hindustan Times The government’s decision to scrap high-value currency has sent wholesale vegetable prices crashing to rock-bottom levels, bringing misery to millions of farmers hoping for good returns for their produce after two successive drought years. Onions sold for just Re 1 per kilogram in wholesale markets at Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch and Mandsaur this week while tomatoes cost less than Rs 2 per kg in Andhra Pradesh and Chandigarh. A kilogram of cauliflower...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recommended demonetisation of 500- and 1,000-rupee banknotes hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the surprise move in a televised address to the nation in the evening of November 8. The government and the RBI have kept the consultation process that led to the decision to demonetise 86% of India’s cash in circulation a closely-guarded secret. Both, however, have insisted that the...

-Hindustan Times Low-cost State-sponsored food schemes are mushrooming across India. Inspired by Tamil Nadu’s Amma Canteens – where meals are sold for as little as Rs. 5 - Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana and Rajasthan have followed suit and started similar canteens in their states. Madhya Pradesh too is planning to launch a similar subsidised food scheme. The growth of such canteens across India underscores several issues related to the Right to...

-Hindustan Times Chinsurah, West Bengal: A 163-year-old municipality administering a small town in West Bengal has shown the world how to manage solid waste in an eco-friendly way, potentially giving urban planners and administrators the key to tackling one of the biggest civic problems. The initiatives of Uttarpara-Kotrung municipality helped the Kolkata Solid Waste Management Improvement Project win a global award, defeating nearest contenders Auckland and Milan in urban solid waste management...