-Economic and Political Weekly Gian Singh (giansingh88@yahoo.com), Anupama (anupamauppal@yahoo. com) and Rupinder Kaur (rupinderkaur0076@gmail.com) teach economics at Punjabi University, Patiala; Gurinder Kaur (gurinder2005@yahoo.co.in) and Sukhvir Kaur (drsukhvir.sk@gmail.com) teach economics at Dashmesh Khalsa College, Zirakpur. The paper examines various hitherto unexplored aspects of indebtedness among farmers and agricultural labour households in rural Punjab. It analyses the extent and distribution of indebtedness among farmers and agricultural labourers, their sources of debt and the per...

-The Telegraph After the third general elections held in 1962, the scholar-statesman, C. Rajagopalachari, wrote a fascinating, if now forgotten, essay on the imperfections of our young democracy. "The Indian electorate", remarked Rajaji, "suffers from well-known defects from which Western democracies are relatively free. The Indian voters are in great measure poor and vulnerable to bribery: even a day's expense for food serves to buy a large number of the poor...

-The Indian Express Government policies could not be framed solely on the findings of international reports, he maintained. EVEN AS he acknowledged that the health impacts of air pollution were “real” and “dangerous”, Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave on Friday contested some of the numbers presented in a new global report, which has identified India as the worst affected country and attributed more than a million deaths in the country in...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: CBSE schools will have to use NCERT textbooks from the 2017-18 academic session. The move to make National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) study materials mandatory for all Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) schools across the country is expected to standardise the curriculum across schools in the country. The decision was taken at a review meeting chaired by Union minister for human resource...

-Livemint.com FSSAI says it has set up a scientific panel on ‘food fortification and nutrition’ to help fight malnutrition in the country New Delhi: The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) on Tuesday said it has set up a scientific panel on “food fortification and nutrition” to help fight malnutrition in the country. On 2 February, the regulator notified a draft plan to make supply of fortified food mandatory for government-supported...