-The Business Standard   NC Saxena, a former member of the National Advisory Council believes that the regulatory regime in the states continues to be oppressive. In an e-mailed interview with Aditi Phadnis, Saxena says that the fundamental problem in India is the low tax-GDP ratio and neither the last government nor the current one seems interested in increasing revenues. Edited excerpts: * The new government appears to be watering down a lot...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In a first comprehensive report on 'extent of damage' caused by Hudhud in Andhra Pradesh, the state government has informed the Centre that the very severe cyclonic storm had not only killed 46 persons and injured 43 others but also affected 20.93 lakh families and took lives of 2831 animals and 24.43 lakh poultry/ducks in four districts on October 12. The details, extended by Andhra Pradesh...

-Down to Earth There are other factors for food price inflation, says the study commissioned in the wake of persistent double digit food price inflation between 2012-13 The rural job scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), which guarantees 100 days of unskilled job to rural households in a year, has been blamed by a number of economists for food price inflation. But a new study by the Reserve Bank...

-The Telegraph A swathe of land stretching from the Himalayan foothills to the Indo-Gangetic plains has experienced a steady and significant decrease in water stored in lakes, reservoirs, rivers and as groundwater over the past decade, government scientists have said. Scientists at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting here and their collaborators in other institutions have found that the terrestrial water storage (TWS) - a measure of surface and underground...

-The Hindu Ignoring hunger and malnutrition will have significant costs to any country's development. Nutrition improvement has both intrinsic and instrumental value One of the disappointments in the post-reform period in India has been the slow progress in the reduction of malnutrition, especially with reference to the underweight among children. In fact, the rate of change in the percentage of underweight children has been negligible in the period 1998-99 to 2005-06; the...