-The Times of India BHUBANESWAR: Even as Odisha continued to feel the potato heat because of the West Bengal government's undeclared restrictions on inter-state transportation of the tuber, the state government on Wednesday formed a taskforce to chalk out a long-term strategy to deal with the issue. The panel, headed by agriculture secretary, will submit an action plan focussing on production, preservation and distribution of potato within a month, food supplies and...

-The Business Standard Interview with Union minister in charge of food and public distribution Ever since the new government took office in May, food prices and related issues have been one of the most discussed subjects. Ram Vilas Paswan, the minister in charge of food and public distribution, says hoarders are to blame. And, speaks of the various other priorities under his charge. Edited exceprts of a talk with Sanjeeb Mukherjee: * The...

-The Indian Express A headlong rush into PPPs will only leave a trail of disputes, renegotiations, corruption. The conventional wisdom in India on public-private partnerships (PPPs) is that they help governments raise capital to meet large infrastructure investment targets. But this rationale for promoting PPPs does not stand on strong foundations. There are three potential reasons for supporting PPPs. First, they enable governments to access more capital without visibly breaching fiscal targets. In...

-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 Hindu It was late afternoon on December 21, 2012, five days after five men and a juvenile gang-raped and fatally assaulted a 23-year-old paramedic student in a moving bus in Delhi. The stream of people walking towards Raisina Hill kept growing. Every few minutes, a loud sound followed by smoke billowing from tear gas shells fired from the towering red sandstone government buildings would send the protesters running. In a...