-Tehelka Last year’s Red Fort rhetoric has not been matched by action on the ground, with separate toilets for students remaining elusive as ever One part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on Independence Day this year can safely be predicted: the reeling out of statistics to prove that the Swachh Bharat campaign is sweeping the nation. The cleanliness drive launched on 2 October, 2014, was announced from the ramparts of the...

-The Hindu At present, the subsidy is paid to urea producers and importers, not farmers. Consensus continues to elude the Centre on the politically sensitive reform of the urea sector, where it has accumulated an unpaid subsidy bill of Rs. 40,000 crore. Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over a meeting of senior Ministers and officials last Tuesday, which discussed if the subsidy could be provided directly to farmers through the direct benefit transfer...

-The Times of India In all the buzz about Narendra Modi's promotion of #selfiewithdaughter, what seems to have been overlooked is one bar baric form of discrimination that millions of daughters continue to suffer in this day and age. It's child marriage, which affects the upbringing of daughters and pushes them into situations long before they are physically and mentally capable of handling them. The country has displayed few signs of...

-The Hindu Business Line Don’t let Modi’s gloss undermine the efforts and achievements of the UPA government, says the former Prime Minister This is the text of a speech delivered at the Congress chief ministers’ conclave in New Delhi on June 9 There is somewhat of a euphoria that our GDP growth since 2014-15 has started accelerating once again. But doubts have been expressed both within and outside government about the validity of...

-The Telegraph Nagpur: Maharashtra's BJP-led government has put on hold confined field trials for genetically modified (GM) crops "until all doubts are cleared", following "objections from reputed members of society" including RSS affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch. No time bar has been specified for the restrictions, which come days before the onset of the monsoon and the start of the sowing season. The state agriculture department wrote to private and public sector companies on...