-The Times of India New Delhi: Amid predictions of good monsoon rainfall, Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh on Tuesday said the country would definitely see higher foodgrain production during 2016-17 even as he made it clear that there is no plan to tax agricultural income. While giving his reassurance, he said the Centre will probe if there was any anomaly in the system with regard to undeclared incomes. He said he...

-The Hindu Jaipur: Ironic though it may sound, a unique memorial celebrating the Right to Information has come up in the Beawar town of Rajasthan — where the RTI movement had started 20 years ago — at a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the State has opted to delete chapters on the evolution of RTI campaign and law from its school textbooks. Hundreds of people from all walks of...

Situation alarming: More than one-third population hit by drought   The country is facing severe drought for the second consecutive year. Conservative estimates from official sources show that over a quarter of rural habitations are facing drinking water scarcity. Although both India Meteorological Department and Skymet have predicted a more than normal rainfall during June-September, 2016, the water storage available in 91 major reservoirs of the country has declined from 22 percent...

There is a general perception that men are the primary breadwinners and, therefore, they are the ones responsible for fending for their families. However, recently released data from the population Census 2011 shows that around 3.3 crore households in the country are headed by women. In other words, overall there are 13.2 percent female-headed households (See Chart 1). The Census data shows that there are 59.4 lakh single member female-headed...

-The Hindu India’s first IPR policy trots out the worn western fairy tale that more IP means innovation, and encourages the pointless privatisation of indigenous knowledge India’s National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy, released in mid-May, is a bewildering document. There are two ways to read this policy. The first is as a gigantic exercise in dissimulation, with a terse declaration — India is not changing its IPR laws — tucked inside...