-Live Mint BJP says bringing parties under RTI Act would hamper smooth functioning of parties, information could be misused by opponents New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on Thursday said bringing political parties under the Right to Information (RTI) Act would hamper the smooth functioning of parties and the information could be misused by opponents, in a departure from BJP's earlier stance. The ruling party's U-turn,...

-Reuters NEW DELHI: With grain silos spilling over, exports on the rise and an avowed market champion for prime minister, India's threat to trash a global trade deal in the name of food security appears puzzling. But government officials say Prime Minister Narendra Modi is prepared to brazen out global outrage to seize a historic chance to build a rural power base with his defence of farm subsidies and to banish memories...

-The Times of India VISAKHAPATNAM: Among the many challenges before them, bringing down the number of farmer suicides might prove to be one of the toughest for the new governments of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. As per the national crime records bureau ( NCRB) data, unified Andhra Pradesh was only second to Maharashtra in terms of suicides by self-employed persons in agriculture. While Maharashtra had witnessed around 3,146 deaths in 2013, it...

-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...

-The Indian Express Nilekani's efforts to convince the NDA of Aadhaar's benefits appear to have paid off. A half-hour meeting that Aadhaar architect Nandan Nilekani had with Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this month followed by a conferring couple of days later with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has reportedly sorted the go-no go situation for the ambitious UIDAI project. The two meetings and a third that Modi held with his key...