-The Indian Express Having completed over five months at the Centre, the BJP-led government faced a barrage of allegations during a discussion at the World Economic Forum, where social activist Aruna Roy, earlier a member of National Advisory Council under Sonia Gandhi, charged the government with not doing much for the poor, taking away freedom of speech and breaking down social harmony. Speaking at a session moderated by Nik Gowing of BBC...

-The Indian Express Attitudes toward climate change in India can appear paradoxical. Although India is one of the countries most deeply vulnerable to climate impacts, climate change does not rank high on policymakers' list of concerns. Two factors explain this inattention. First, India has pressing and immediate development concerns, such as providing sanitation, improved healthcare and access to affordable energy to its population, while the effects of climate change appear abstract...

Despite high prices of fruits and vegetables, India's area under horticultural crops - mainly fruits, vegetables, spices and flowers - has doubled in around twenty years (between 1991-92 and 2012-13). This has resulted in increase in production of horticultural crops nearly threefold (2.8 times). A new report from the Ministry of Agriculture says that the area under horticultural crops during this period rose from 12.77 million hectares to 23.69 million...

-The Hindu Every effort needs to be made to reform MGNREGA, as it has been both a major success and a huge failure. The best way for this is to study carefully the conditions that made it a success and also to undertake a diagnostics of its failures An impression has gained ground in recent weeks that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre is inimical to the Mahatma Gandhi...

-The Hindu THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Much of the drop in yield came from air pollution caused by fine particles like soot as well as ozone generated by sunlight acting on emissions of precursor molecules. India's food grain production is facing a double whammy, with heightened air pollution adding to the impact of climate change on crop yields, according to a recent study. "Our statistical model suggests that, averaged over India, yields in 2010 were up...