-Hindustan Times With the key Land Acquisition bill stalled by political differences with the Opposition, the Centre may change tack and get states to enact their own land legislation, enabling it to push along the economic reform process.   Finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday that the states that wanted speedy development could take the lead in framing such laws with the Centre's backing, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi said “political considerations”...

-Business Standard This could help bypass central legislation and break the land Bill deadlock Ten big states, most of those ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its alliance partners, on Wednesday sought to unshackle themselves from the logjam over amendments to the contentious land acquisition Bill, 2013, by proposing to bring their own laws for boosting infrastructure development. At a NITI Aayog meeting to discuss the land Bill (the Right to...

-The Hindu Chennai had the highest proportion of ‘severe’ days based on AQI Official air quality data for the first half of this year shows that while Delhi does indeed face high levels of air pollution, Kanpur, Varanasi and Chennai are worse off. Averaging across the ten pollution monitoring stations in the city, a little over a quarter of the days from January to June this year in Delhi had an Air Quality...

-Deccan Herald Those who sipped a cup of Yashoda’s home-brewed tea have never been unimpressed. The special tea is prepared using locally available herbs and aromatic leaves. Yashoda and her husband Chandraprakash of Biligerepalya village in Tiptur taluk of Tumakuru district are well-known for their innovative activities that include value addition of agricultural produces. Until 2008, the couple were into chemical farming, much like everyone else around them. At a time when they were grappling...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: It hasn't washed away the fears of deficit rainfall, but the monsoon's satisfactory performance so far has sharply reduced the possibility of a second consecutive drought in the country this year. In a drought year, average nationwide rainfall is at least 10 per cent below normal. As of now, almost halfway into the rainy season, the monsoon is 2 per cent below average, still within the...