-Livemint.com Loan waivers and electricity subsidies are band-aids at best; a deeper transformation is needed The past few days have neatly summed up the scale and nature of the challenges facing India’s agriculture sector. First, the provisional agriculture census 2015-16 showed that landholdings have continued their decades-long trend of fragmentation, leading to a further rise in the proportion of small and marginal farmers. Then, 30,000 farmers, who had started their march from...

-The Indian Express Much before the Supreme Court started hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the Constitutional validity of Aadhaar and much before the unique identity number roiled a nation over concerns of privacy, Nandurbar had made peace with the 12-digit identification number. Since the launch of the unique ID in this Maharashtra district, the 12-digit identity has been inextricably tied to people’s lives — from a mother without Aadhaar who was...

-The Hindu It's time we stopped neglecting urban ecosystems Countless poets and lovers have declaimed over the ages that Venice is not just a city; it’s a living dream. By that same measure, irreverent others would hold that during the monsoons in India, its cities are more than just cities; they are lived nightmares. Venice’s waterways are celebrated the world over and hordes of tourists descend on the city every year. In...

-The Indian Express As the elderly population grows, India faces new questions, must find new answers. During my childhood, we had a rather strict rule about having dinner together as a family. My grandparents were close to my father, and he to them. The cacophony of cross-conversations between grandparents, parents, cousins bore testimony to filial responsibility that had been deeply internalised by every generation. For a society in the throes of turbulent change,...

-The Indian Express Judiciary has become another institution where Muslims are more and more under-represented While the percentage of Muslims in prison has never been higher — 21 per cent — the proportion of Muslims convicted — 15.8 per cent — is closer to their share of the population (14.2 per cent in the 2011 census). This indicates that many Muslims arrested by the police and charged end up being acquitted, usually...