-The Hindu Only 44% of households in Bihar, U.P. use toilets 100% of the time: survey Kerala and Mizoram top the list of States, with 100% of households which do not practise open defecation, while Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are at the bottom of the rankings, with less than 44% of such households, The Hindu’s analysis of the raw data generated by a government-commissioned survey finds. Sixty eight per cent of rural households...

-The Indian Express The Finance Ministry directed smaller PSBs to cut their corporate loan exposure to 25 per cent of their risk-weighted assets over the medium term and focus more on retail lending. Corporate loans corner the lion’s share of rising bad loans in public sector banks while retail loans have a far superior track record when it comes to timely repayment, according to the latest available Reserve Bank of India...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Different answers by two Union ministers to the same question have left the "victim" bewildered. The conflicting answers have both been given in Parliament, making a mockery of the principle of "collective responsibility" of the government. While information technology and law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had on February 2 stated that an FIR had been registered against unknown persons over a newspaper report on Aadhaar data breach, junior home...

-The Indian Express The last two years have seen some progress in expediting completion of unfinished major and minor canal projects. Pune: Sustained efforts over the last two years to improve irrigation access for farmers in India seem to have begun showing results, at least in terms of creation of physical infrastructure. The Narendra Modi government had, in 2016, embarked on a mission to complete all unfinished major and medium irrigation projects – some...

-The Indian Express Highly-placed sources in the state government said, “The crop diversification model is region- wise taking into account the soil health and climate conditions that will evolve in a time-bound manner.” Mumbai: The Maharashtra government has decided to push a crop diversification model to create a better mechanism for demand and supply and higher renumeration for small and marginal farmers across state. The decision has come at a time of...