-The Hindu Party may have missed target section The Congress had seemed to be in a relatively better position when the election year began, but its efforts to create an anti-incumbency atmosphere in the country were derailed by the Narendra Modi-led BJP government post-Pulwama and Balakot. Having struggled to counter the dominant narrative of nationalism and Hindutva created by the ruling party, the Congress announced its minimum income guarantee, or NYAY, scheme for...

-The New Indian Express As polling season concludes across the country, The Sunday Standard puts an ear to the ground and listens in to the expectations that India has from its next government NEW DELHI: Agrarian irony cries out in Punjab, the food bowl of the country, with farmers’ indebtedness only growing in recent years.    The agrarian irony is marked by overproduction in the face of inadequate price, with lopsided institutional credit,...

-TheWire.in Veerpal Kaur, who lost her father and then husband to the growing spate of farmer suicides in Punjab, says neither the SAD-BJP alliance nor the Congress is addressing the issue. Dharamvir Singh was being considered, one thing played in their favour – both the BRIde and groom had lost their fathers, both farmers, to suicide. Kaur’s father drank poison in 1995 and Singh’s hanged himself in 1990. “That was what clinched it....

-Down to Earth The new government has to focus on the rural population, their aspirations and the economy By this time most of us know Sunaina Rawat. Still a BRIef introduction: she is a 12-year-old girl from a village in Uttar Pradesh. When the news channel NDTV’s head Prannoy Roy interviewed her on life and aspirations while covering elections, she immediately became one of the most imposing symbol for the country’s rural...

-The Indian Express The Sainis, who have grown BRInjal on three kanals (less than half-an-acre) of rented land, are at the centre of a brewing storm over the “use of Bt BRInjal” or other genetically modified crop in Haryana. Fatehabad: “WHAT CRIME have we committed?” asks Miro Rani, the fear visible on her face. Rani, 50, is the wife of Ishar Saini, a 62-year-old BRInjal farmer near Ratia town in Fatehabad. Advertising The...