-India Today Geography of rice and wheat has been transformed with Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh generating surpluses Almost 50 years ago, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri went on air to appeal to Indians to skip a meal a day. Foodgrain supplies had come under strain after the 1965 drought, and the patriotic ethos cautioned against over-consumption: what you ate left that much less for the rest. Today, it is...

-The Business Standard The Budget missed the chance to articulate its intentions to the farming community; the prime minister's Independence Day speech provides another invaluable opportunity Young Indians starting their careers in an environment devoid of hope and opportunity and surviving on dole will be inclined to populist politics. But the farming community expects much more substance from the government, and the Budget was a good example of how populism trumped...

-The Hindu   India is among the world champions of social underspending. Without enlightened social policies, growth mania is unlikely to deliver more under the new government than it did under the previous one Few people today remember the letter written on August 7, 2013 by Mr. Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In this letter, available on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) website, Mr. Modi criticised...

-The Hindu Business Line   Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (The more things change the more they remain the same ): A French proverb. In its earnest to tackle rising food inflation the new Government has taken a welcome initiative to delist fruits/ vegetables including onions (FVO) from the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act, while all other measures are as usual - short term of political expediency, repeated several...

-Live Mint   Recent Maoist violence highlights the conflicts that centre around the model of India's economic growth   New Delhi: The deaths of nine people from violence related directly to the general election-occurring in and around polling booths-are an early warning to the next government that it must start thinking about how to balance economic growth with social justice and equity, experts said.   These deaths-mostly in areas hit by Maoist violence-highlight the conflicts that...