-The Indian Express Among the Modi government’s many hits was one crucial miss — agriculture. The Narendra Modi sarkar’s performance in the first year has at least five major achievements and one major miss. To ensure that this neglect does not become its Achilles’ heel, the Modi sarkar will have to focus on and initiate reforms in this weakest link in the chain — agriculture. Else, it will not let the Indian...

-DNA India's agriculture sector is thriving and can provide livelihood to millions more. False pictures form the main plank of the political debate on India's agriculture. One is that of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the other of the Congress. The two big political parties in the country agree with each other in believing that farmers and the landless folk in the villages are at the end of the tether, and...

-The Financial Express Smart irrigation management steps, including harnessing social sector schemes for irrigation works, did the trick The spate of recent farmer suicides has once again drawn the country’s attention to the deepening agrarian crisis. Media is abuzz with opinions and expert advice on how to provide succour to the farming community. Oft-repeated among these is the demand to increase public investment in irrigation. However, we need to remember that, since 1990, public...

-The Times of India Blog India’s Right to Information (RTI) Act has caught the imagination of people in this country, while being appreciated across the world. A great change has come in India this decade in the power equation between the sovereign citizens of the country and those in power. This change is just beginning and if we can sustain and strengthen it, our defective elective democracy could metamorphose, within the...

-The Indian Express Government’s insistence on acquisition is rooted in a rush to impose the Gujarat model on the rest of India. The development agenda of the Narendra Modi government implies industrialisation. The BJP’s 2014 mandate was indeed for job creation. The “neo-middle class”, which Modi defined when he was CM of Gujarat as made up of aspiring city dwellers who have just emerged from poverty, supported him more widely than the...