-Economic and Political Weekly   The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan should have been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is not to be in this mid-year budget. Vipul Mudgal (vipulmudgal@gmail.com) heads the Inclusive Media for Change project at the Centre...

-The Indian Express The Congress has now demanded a CBI inquiry into all ration cards made in Chhattisgarh in the past six-seven years. The BPL ration cards which were made in large numbers in Chhattisgarh before the 2013 assembly elections, as reported by The Indian Express on Friday, was an exact repetition of the developments ahead of the 2008 polls. If it was the Food Security Act in the 2013 elections, in...

-The Business Standard States need to create alternative marketing structures for farm produce since middlemen also provide vital services that are otherwise unavailable to the farmer   One of the issues often raised in the context of high food inflation is the pressing need to change the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC), the marketing boards established by state governments. The earlier United Progressive Alliance government had asked the Congress-ruled states to remove fruit...

-The Pioneer The Government must establish research & development and innovation centres at the village level, which can be instrumental in evolving solutions for the actual problems being faced on day-to-day basis by the farming community The agriculture sector today faces multiple problems, thanks to insufficient rainfall, falling crop productivity and failures coupled with low profitability. Climate change, air pollution, frequent droughts and other adversities have brought the farmers to their knees,...

-The Hindu   An improvement in sanitation and cleanliness will eliminate much of the difference in malnutrition between India and the rest of the world, and across Indian States Historically the greatest advances in longevity and mortality reduction have come not from treatment of individual disease but from public health. This includes modern drainage and sewerage systems (sewage treatment plants), drinking water systems that produce and deliver disease-free water and solid waste disposal...