-The Hindu Business Line How a cluster of villages in Rajasthan embraced transparency, spurred a nationwide movement and inspired the birth of a digital portal to counter the dilution of the RTI The walls were painted a bright yellow. Drawn on them in Black were statements of income and expenditure, breaking down figures in meticulous detail with rows and columns stretching across two and sometimes three floors. The paintings weren’t just on...

-The Indian Express The story of rice in India is complex, influenced as much by geography as by taste, faith, politics and contemporary nutrition science. But, after years of getting panned for being unhealthy, it is finally making its way back to the centre of the table. Is Basmati rice, with its pristinely white grain, the only variety that lends itself to making a biryani? It seems a rather silly question...

-Scroll.in From water conservation, the focus has shifted to farm irrigation. At the height of the June summer in Madhya Pradesh, Mannubai Chamariya heaved boulders from the banks of a dry stream to a site where other workers arranged them in a tiled wall, filling the gaps with cement. The work was arduous but Chamariya and the others did not mind it. They were building a small check dam in the hope that it...

-The Hindu Three agencies have come up with varying figures, ranging from 7-120% of GDP, it said The Standing Committee on Finance has shied away from estimating the quantum of Black money in and outside India, saying that different methods by various agencies are yielding vastly differing figures. The Standing Committee relied on three institutes — the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, the National Institute of Financial Management and the...

-The Indina Express The proposal holds significance given that the EC Act arms the government with powers to impose stock limits and movement restrictions on agricultural commodities. New Delhi: Arguing that the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, was framed during the era of food scarcity, the NITI Aayog has proposed that the Act be scrapped because it is an “impediment in the free movement of commodities” given that the country is now...