-The Business Standard The Budget missed the chance to articulate its intentions to the farming community; the prime minister's Independence Day speech provides another invaluable opportunity Young Indians starting their careers in an environment devoid of hope and opportunity and surviving on dole will be inclined to populist politics. But the farming community expects much more substance from the government, and the Budget was a good example of how populism trumped...

-The Telegarph New Delhi: India has asked its citizens to defer non-essential travel to four West African nations struck by outbreaks of the Ebola virus and has alerted its health surveillance system to track travellers arriving from these countries for up to four weeks. Health minister Harsh Vardhan today said people should defer "non-essential travel" to Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria that have cumulatively reported 1,603 Ebola patients, including 887 deaths. The...

-The Hindu The gulf between statistics and substance is not easily bridged. The number of rape cases registered in the country may conceal the reality in two significant ways. First, only a small proportion of the rapes are reported at all. Secondly, a significant number of rape cases relate to consensual sex but have been criminalised by circumstances. The Hindu's six-month investigation into cases of sexual assault in Delhi has...

-The Financial Express The Narendra Modi government's decision to disallow field trials of 15 varieties of genetically modified (GM) crops came on top of several state governments virtually thwarting such trials of 45 GM crop varieties approved by the regulator during the previous UPA regime. The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) gave approval for 45 GM crop trials ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. However, states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha,...

-The Hindu "I lay the blame for a lot of this at the door of Parliament," lawyer and leading women's rights activist Vrinda Grover said. In January 2013, Seema (name changed), who had moved to Delhi from rural Bihar with her brother went to the Hanuman temple on Delhi's Panchkuian Road with 19-year-old Sameer (name changed). He put vermilion on her forehead, the couple embraced and now married in their own eyes,...