-The Hindu Business Line Mehsana (Gujarat): A monocropping culture, driven by healthy returns, threatens to hurt cotton farmers in Mehsana and other districts in the country's largest cotton-producing State, say agriculture experts working in the region. As the price of cotton slips due to excess supply and China scaling back on purchases, farmers in north Gujarat risk mounting their losses and the likelihood of reduced sowing in May. They had increased cotton...

-The Hindu India's growth story of the last two decades has had one recurring theme: that the pattern of economic growth is accentuating insecurities. Yet, there continues to be a deep divide over whether the gains from growth ought to be ploughed back to achieve social security for everyone. Social security has come to be linked to job benefits, tying it to one's status as a worker in the formal or...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Leprosy may have disappeared from the state's health mandate, but there is compelling evidence that the infection is returning to the community. Though officially eliminated from the state ten years ago, last year leprosy infected over 16,400 people, 13% of them children. Also, the state accounted for 13% of the country's new leprosy cases. Statistics also reveal that 57% of the newly detected cases were multibacillary leprosy-an...

-The Times of India GUWAHATI: Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi announced a cash incentive to below poverty lines (BPL) mothers who give birth to girl child on Saturday. This comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "beti bachao, beti padhao" call. At a function on National Girl Child Day here, Gogoi said his government will introduce the new scheme at the budget session of the assembly beginning March 2. "We will provide Rs 5,000 to...

-The Tribune The biggest lesson of the last 10 years since the Right to Information Act came into force is that Indian democracy, if it has to be meaningful, has to have a strong, effective RTI regime. That regime has to be equally owned by those who govern and those who are governed. TEN years after the Right to Information Act promised the country a "practical regime of right to information for...