-Down to Earth   Advance estimates by agriculture ministry project 0.8 million tonnes increase in production over earlier estimate despite freak weather event   The unseasonal rains and hail in March this year seem to have had little effect on overall crop production estimation. India is going to witness its highest foodgrain production of 264 milllion tonnes, according to the third advance estimates for 2013-14, released by the Union agriculture ministry on Friday. It...

-The Business Standard   A seven-point agenda to fix India's public services, and overcome poorly designed systems India's Achilles Heel remains its inability to deliver public services. India's aspiration to be a global economic power will be unrealised if this remains unsolved. Why is this problem so particularly acute? Is it political interference and corruption, poorly designed programmes and weak administration? Or a much deeper cultural problem of aversion to collective action, often...

-The Indian Express   Available data suggests the programme has been effective in reducing rural poverty and gender discrimination Nirmala Sitharaman's misinformation (‘How not to run a programme', IE, May 9) on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which employs one in every four Indian rural households every year, is disappointing. Consider these facts. For the first time in over two decades, the increase in rural consumption (a proxy indicator...

-The Indian Express   The Gujarat model continues to generate more heat than light. This is in response to Professor Yoginder K. Alagh's article, ‘Posture-nomics' (IE, May 7), wherein he says, "Getting back to agriculture, the 10 per cent growth rate figure was the result of a paid-for study commissioned by the government of Gujarat and conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute, to which [Ashok] Gulati was affiliated. The finding was...

-The Business Standard   More, water levels in the reservoirs of southern India are below the 10-year average at 8.28 billion cubic metres As doubts mount over the impact of El Niño on the southwest monsoon season in 2014, India's preparedness to face a low rainfall situation seems to have improved in the past four-five years. However, there are many gaps to be plugged. For example, although the average water in major reservoirs across...