-The Indian Express Cotton growers are realising decent rates despite bumper crop this time, thanks to government procurement. Aurangabad: In early-November, when Satyakumar Kolhe went to sell 18 out of his total 35 quintals produce of kapas (Raw un-ginned cotton) at the Ambad wholesale market in Jalna district, the traders there quoted an average price of Rs 4,500 per quintal. The 45-year-old from Guru Pimpari village of Jalna’s Ghansawangi taluka, who grew...

-The Indian Express For eight years, Kantabai Jadhav was among 14 tribal men and women, and eight children, who lived as bonded labourers working on farms, a cowshed and a rice mill just 120 km from Mumbai in Dhamane village of Pune’s Maval taluka. Ahmednagar, Pune: “They would call us dogs, and other bad words for women… There was no cooking oil, nor any vegetables, ever. There was dried fish and foodgrain...

-The Hindu The nation’s current social and political predicament poses an existential challenge Ominous clouds have gathered over India, casting shadows of divisiveness and hate, threatening to undermine civil society and halt or even reverse economic progress. There is today a risk of going over a precipice beyond which there may not be a turning point. As the new decade dawned, the two of us decided to get together to write not on...

-The Hindu A Ministry of Home Affairs spokesperson told The Hindu that the form or the schedule to collect data for the NPR has not been finalised yet. Confusion prevailed after images of forms of ‘National Population Register (NPR) 2020’ seeking details on “place of birth of father and mother” started doing the rounds on social media, even though Home Minister Amit Shah clarified a day ago that there was “no link...

-The Indian Express The ongoing price recovery in major crops is in danger of being stymied by knee-jerk government response. A lot of analyst commentary on the latest quarterly GDP numbers for India has focused on the low growth in “nominal” terms: Gross value added (GVA) at current prices grew by just 6.3% year-on-year in July-September and 7.1% for April-September. If this first-half trend holds for the rest of 2019-20, it would...