-The Indian Express In Marathwada’s worst-hit districts of Beed, Osmanabad and Latur, households now have an uncompromising priority list of expenses as an economy hit by years of near-total crop failure goes into a tailspin. Beed/ Osmanabad: About 65 kilometres from the cracked earth that was once their source of income, Mandakini Mujmule, in her forties, and her daughter Anita, 21, have spent 16 days in Beed city’s government hospital. Mandakini has...

-Business Standard Digitisation of supply chain for BPL beneficiaries can save Rs 1,080 crore a year but much needs to be done to plug leakages Hyderabad: In this state of information technology professionals, now even a village woman knows how the malfunctioning server in Hyderabad can affect the delivery of subsidised foodgrain to her. Technical snags can make the queues longer at fair price shops in Andhra Pradesh, even a year after the...

-The Hindu The Modi government must stop engaging U.S. bureaucrats as patent consultants and instead showcase the Indian patent statute as an exemplar for a balanced regime Earlier this month, the media reported that India “privately” assured the United States that it will not issue any more compulsory licenses. This report was reminiscent of a theory propounded by psychologist Lenore E. Walker in 1979 on abusive patterns in relationships. Four stages of abuse Walker...

-Business Standard Forest Rights Act allows government to divert forest lands for other purposes only after prior consent of the tribals through gram sabhas Forest rights of tribals over their traditional lands in Ghatbarra village of Surguja district have been taken away by the Chhattisgarh government to facilitate coal mining of Prasa East and Kete Besan coal block. The block has been allocated to Rajasthan Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited (RVUNL) and Adani Minerals...

-The Hindu In response to a RTI application, Income Tax Department reveals that 6.57 lakh individuals earned 20 times the GDP in 2011. Believe it or not, income figures shared by the Income-Tax Department in response to an RTI application by a retired Indian Revenue Service official has revealed that agricultural income recorded an exponential increase from 2004 to 2013, touching a total of almost Rs.2,000 lakh crore for individual assessees in...