-Livemint.com India needs to invest more in developing rural infrastructure The script is familiar. After borrowing heavily for inputs such as seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, farmers in most parts of India wait for the monsoon. When the rain fails, the farmers’ agony begins. Forced migration to cities in search of manual work, distress sales of land and, in extreme cases, suicides are the way out. This kharif season has a distressingly familiar ring...

-The Hindu Business Line Even as village after village in India is ‘electrified’, many households within them, equal to the US population, are not The Prime Minister in his Independence Day speech reaffirmed the goal of “power for all” and said 18,500 villages which still have no electricity would be electrified within the next 1,000 days. The goal of complete electrification was first stated by the Rajadhyaksha committee on power in 1978...

-The Hindu Rescuing Maternal and Child Health-only systems, which have become under-resourced and have built a very high-cost but low-performance culture, will be a challenging task. Given the rising burden of non-communicable diseases, there is an increasing demand to build health systems that can address these concerns. However, given how large the unfinished agenda of the Millennium Development Goals is, the Indian government has chosen to stay focussed on Maternal and Child...

-Business Standard Of deaths by natural causes, lightning is one of the biggest killers in India Last week, nearly two dozen people were killed after being struck by lightning in Andhra Pradesh. Of deaths by natural causes, lightning is one of the biggest killers in India. On an average, it kills 1,500 people every year. According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, in 2014, lightning led to 2,582 deaths or 12.8 per...

-Economic and Political Weekly After coming to power in 2014, the National Democratic Alliance government took several measures to dilute the pro-poor provisions of the Land Acquisition Act of 2013. Though it has backed down, several questions remain over the way the Modi government has dealt with the issue of land acquisition. Santosh Verma (santosh.econ@gmail.com) is at the Council for Social Development, New Delhi. Land acquisition—by private corporations or the state—has raised vital...