-Ideas for India In 2007, Bihar introduced the coupon system in PDS to curb leakages at fair price shops. This column argues that even though the administrative logic of the coupon system is fundamentally sound, such reform can be effective only when accompanied by institutional transformations that broker change in the existing local politics of inclusion and exclusion.  The performance of Bihar’s public Distribution system (PDS) remains a topic of considerable national...

-The Tribune Chandigarh: The worst fears about the northern region of the country losing its groundwater have been confirmed. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) satellite imagery made available to the Centre warns of fast disappearing of subsoil water in these states. The NASA report forwarded to the Punjab Government by the Union Ministry of Agriculture says that “beneath north India’s irrigated fields, the groundwater has been disappearing”. “It is being...

-Economic and Political Weekly Farmers' unions and political parties have been demanding the implementation of the Swaminathan minimum support price (cost plus 50%) to address agrarian crisis and farmers' distress. But they have not raised demands for the implementation of the recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers, which have the potential to provide lasting solutions. Ranjit Singh Ghuman (ghumanrs@yahoo.co.uk) is a Nehru SAIL Chair Professor, Centre for Research in Rural and...

-The Indian Express Note to policymakers: Access to technology by itself does not ensure learning. Speaking at the Saarc Summit in Nepal last November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that “information technology has removed all barriers to quality education”. With the launch of Digital India, state governments and education practitioners have become increasingly interested in the potential of technology to address low learning levels in primary schools. Behind Modi’s assertion is a...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Election Commission has suspended its five-month-old project to clean the electoral rolls by linking and authenticating voter I-card details with Aadhaar data, days after the Supreme Court ruled that the unique identification number could be used only for PDS and LPG Distribution schemes. "All further activities relating to collection/feeding/seeding of Aadhaar number being undertaken under the National Electoral Rolls Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP) shall...