-The Indian Express Delhi lost the window of opportunity to avoid an outbreak because of a governance deficit; first because the state was in election mode and then because of the AAP’s internal squabbles. The past few weeks have witnessed substantial media coverage on the dengue outbreak in Delhi. Heartrending stories of clearly avoidable deaths gave the crisis a human face. Focusing on Delhi, most sought to expose the lack of...

-Hindustan Times About 50 km south of Ranchi, in Khunti district, a narrow dirt road leads to Ganloya village. Makeshift shops selling tobacco and mobile recharge cards are interspersed with thatched huts and tamarind trees in the hamlet of Panna Lal Mahto, allegedly one of India’s biggest human traffickers. Despite the scorching heat, girls play barefoot in a clearing by a rice field. Nearby, a group of men sitting on a charpoy drink...

-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...

-Business Standard The lens with which we report India's farm crisis has to change As we head for another year of trouble in the countryside, it is time to discard the enduring media tropes of rural distress. Like the image of a grizzled Indian farmer, framed against his parched field looking up at an unrelenting sky. Or the all too pervasive conflation of rural distress with farmer suicides. Such characterisation offers the...

The Digital India Mission, launched by the NDA government, aims to connect 2.5 lakh village panchayats with high speed broadband internet by December, 2016 so that citizens can access online services. However, available facts reveal that this is a difficult task to be accomplished. In rural areas, among the youth aged 14-29 about 82 percent do not know how to operate a computer. In urban areas, nearly 51 percent of youth...