-The Financial Express Data from the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 may help states finding it difficult to identify beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act and put their names online, reports Sandip Das in New Delhi. However, given that SECC final numbers, which ranks households based on their socio-economic status, are currently available for only 119 of the country's 640 districts, the Centre's plan to roll out the NFSA...

-Frontline If Budget 2015 is any indication, the Modi government is going beyond what could be called benign neglect of agriculture to policy moves that are likely to harm its viability. IT is scarcely surprising that farmers are upset with the Narendra Modi government. Indeed, the rosy dreams created by that famous campaign advertisement of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), when farmers spoke of the high crop prices and better cultivation conditions...

-The Indian Express It is easy to see why the Unique Identity (UID) project, also known as Aadhaar, has caught the imagination of many administrators, economists and policymakers. Identity verification is a routine problem in India and Aadhaar sounds like a foolproof solution. The idea is really smart and the technology is cutting-edge. After the initial hurdle of universal enrolment, numerous applications are possible: monitoring the attendance of government employees, linking...

-Business Standard Marriages on hold, children being returned from schools over unpaid fees; the rural economy is bearing the brunt of unseasonal rains, a crisis in the sugar cane sector and a fall in prices of farm pro Hapur/ Meerut: In the mid-afternoon, when most farmers are returning home to rest, Rana Ranjit Singh is sweating buckets on his farm in Uttar Pradesh's Hapur district, searching for vegetables left undamaged after untimely...

-Outlook Corporate karza maafi reaches new heights, social spending new lows This year's budget write-off in customs duty on gold, diamonds and jewellery (all aam aadmi items, of course) is Rs 75,592 crore. That's well over twice the "record" amount allocated to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. As Prof Jayati Ghosh points out, the MNREGA has given billions of person-days of work to tens of millions of poor...