-The Times of India     NEW DELHI: Latest statistical research finds strong causal links between areas with the most suicides and areas where impoverished farMers are trying to grow crops that suffer from wild price fluctuations due to India's relatively recent shift to free market economics. A new study has found that India's shocking rates of suicide are highest in areas with the most debt-ridden farMers who are clinging to tiny smallholdings...

-The Hindustan Times   London: Reinforcing claims of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, a new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge and University College London reveals that the state has high levels of cash crops but lowest levels of farMer suicide rates in India. The study, published in the journal Globalisation and Health, found that Kerala had the highest male suicide rate in India, and claims that there is a ‘suicide...

-Deccan Herald   Barely eMerging out of the shadows of freak weather, the warning of a weak monsoon will push millions of farMers into dire straits. In the midst of all the noise and muck-slinging that dominates the election campaigns there is bad news on the horizon. No, I am not talking of the possibility of a hung Parliament where the numbers don't add up for any political front, but the possibility of...

-The Hindu   If some communities have been denied the benefits of development on grounds of religion, this development is anti-secular, argues Rajeev Bhargava, political theorist Arch rivals the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party continue to trade accusations against each other of playing the communal card in the campaign to the general elections. These are classic instances of the confusion over what secularism is in India. Restoring clarity on the conceptual aspects...

-The Hindu   Ideological labels are likely to mislead by channelling the debate into issues of capitalism and socialism and detract from the real problem George Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Having forgotten the license-permit-quota-raj that enveloped us from 1950 to 1980 and its ‘crony socialism,' many intellectuals, mediapersons and politicians have now discovered ‘crony capitalism.' The license raj consisted of stifling controls imposed on...