-Livemint.com Crop insurance has failed to provide much-needed relief to farmers from destitution With one farmer committing suicide every half-an-hour, the number of farmers who have ended their lives as per official records in India is estimated at over 300,000 over the past two decades. These numbers do not include suicides by agricultural labourers, though they too are victims of the agrarian crisis. As each death affects at least the immediate family...

-The Indian Express Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar says Maharashtra is a huge state and there are ways to raise the funds Mumbai: The Maharashtra government will have to provide Rs 1.14 lakh crore to write off the entire loan burden of all 1.36 crore farmers in Maharashtra, stoking concerns given the state’s debt burden of Rs 4 lakh crore. Highly placed sources said the state budget for 2017-18 was Rs 2.57 lakh...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A group of retired Bureaucrats have written an open letter ruing the "rising authoritarianism and majoritarianism" that is choking dissent, and urging public authorities to take "corrective action" to "reclaim and defend the spirit of the Constitution". "Argumentation and discussion about different perspectives - the lifeblood not only of institutions of learning but of democracy itself -are being throttled," the letter says. "Disagreement and dissent are considered seditious...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: PM Narendra Modi has asked all secretaries to put collective effort to improve the condition of 100 most backward districts in the country. In his interaction with the top Bureaucrats on Monday, the PM said this should be adopted on a mission mode and the various departments work as a team and not in silos to ensure the goal is achieved during "definite short time-frames". Sources...

-NDTV During arguments in court, Former coal secretary HC Gupta had claimed that then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had given the "final approval" in the case. New Delhi: A judgment which convicted three former coal ministry officials for corruption in one of the cases related to the coal scam on Friday has also given a huge relief to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was in charge of the coal ministry...