-The Hindu In Bihar, ‘development’ comes laced with caste. For the upper castes, it is Modi’s pitch on investment that matters while for Backward Classes, Nitish’s social welfare agenda makes him a governance icon. The BJP, having no regional match for Nitish, has banked on Modi’s popularity. “Development” is a word that one encounters frequently across poll-bound Bihar, with people across caste lines using it to explain their political preferences. However, this...

-The Hindu Bhaurao Karhade, who considers Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali his cinematic Bible, sold five acres of farmland to make a rustic and gutsy Marathi film, Khwada. One of the important turn-of-the-century developments has been the democratisation of cinema. The steady spread of cine literacy, the strong influence of moving images combined with an easier access to technology and emerging online exhibition platforms has meant that potentially anyone who dreams of making...

-The Times of India BHOPAL: At a time when suicides by farmers in Madhya Pradesh following scanty rain and poor yield have brought back focus on their plight, allegedly more than 1.77 lakh ghost farmers benefitted from interest subsidies on their loans. Putting a question mark on the much hyped 0% interest farm loan scheme of the state government, a series of RTI queries by TOI revealed that between 2007-08 and 2012-13,...

-DNA When it comes to farmers, the government has precious little to offer The monsoon season is over. With 14 per cent shortfall in the amount of rains, and with nearly 39 per cent of the cropped area in the country hit by a crippling drought, I was expecting the Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan to announce a series of monetary benefits and exemptions in credit repayments for farmers....

-The Times of India BATAGUDA (Odisha): Women and men working on the hillsides is a common sight when travelling through Odisha's Kandhamal district. All day, they crouch in the scorching sun, using crude tools to break large rocks into little stones. It takes each person several days to fill a 5ft-tall container with enough stones to earn about Rs 900. Most tribal women do this backbreaking work but with hardly any proteins...