-The Hindu Business Line From a severely critical stand against Aadhaar in 2014, the Modi-led BJP in power has made a sharp U-turn to bulldoze its way into having every Indian scanned, tagged and labelled. A timeline of the country’s chequered date with the unique identification project You’ve probably read the WhatsApp joke about a post-Aadhaar scenario in 2020 India. A man orders pizza over phone. He is asked for his Aadhaar...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org Despite the slow decline of the renowned handlooms of Dharmavaram in Andhra Pradesh, Shankara Dhanunjaya tried to work hard and prosper. But in 2016, at the age of 35, debts, crumbling dreams and crushing policy changes drove him to suicide All the handloom halls Into mortuary rooms Being metamorphosed That inexplicable sorrow! (From ‘Maggam bathuku’ an epic poem by Dr. U. Radheya, who is from a family of weavers; translated by Dr. P. Ramesh Narayana) In...

-Hindustan Times With the assembly elections over, one of the big issues which will hog public attention in the coming days is the Jat agitation. Before leaving Delhi after their protests on March 1, the Jats promised to come back on March 20 and convert the city into “Jat land”. Whether they will manage to do that or not only time will tell but the reasons for their anger --- lack...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A parliamentary panel has voiced shock that a scholarship for underprivileged meritorious students had not been revised since the scheme was launched in 2008, leaving it at less than half of what households now spend on average on a higher secondary student. According to a survey on social consumption, households spend Rs 12,619 a year on a plus-2 student's schooling, while the yearly amount under the National Means-cum-Merit...

-IANS New Delhi: India’s cash-driven agri sector continues to reel under the effects of demonetisation, with farmers growing fruits and vegetables suffering “huge losses”, say farm leaders who want the Union budget to “compensate” them for these losses. Amid reports of farmers dumping or refusing to harvest crops like tomatoes and peas due to a crash in prices as traders did not have the cash to purchase the produce, farmer leader Ajay...