-Hindustan Times The Modi government is looking to address a worrying agrarian crisis with a set of schemes and Budget provisions aimed at ramping up the larger rural economy, rather than just the farm sector, people familiar with the development told HT. Budget 2015-2016 is likely to provide for a more effective Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayin Yojana, a flagship scheme announced last year to create irrigation infrastructure, with substantially higher allocations. The...

-Frontline Former psephologist Yogendra Yadav, now a member of the political collective Swaraj Abhiyan, recently toured India’s drought-affected districts. He called it a Samvedna Yatra. During the tour, he took note of the agony in rural areas affected by what he calls “one of the worst droughts in independent India” The drought, according to him, has left farmers and the larger rural community in extreme distress, leading to damaging changes in...

-IndiaClimateDialogue.net While over 20% of India’s population has no access to electricity, the richest 40% of the population gets highly subsidised Power; the second of a three-part series on the subsidy skew Along with coal mining, electricity is regulated by the state in India and subsidised. Electricity tariffs are kept deliberately low for poor households. Unfortunately much of this electricity is allocated in such a way that business and industrial consumers as...

-The Hindu Economic agency is one of the most enabling elements to release women from oppression, violence and Powerlessness. A Supreme Court Bench has once again proved that our judiciary can be the torchbearer of progressive attitudes towards women. In 2013, the Justice J.S. Verma Committee, while responding to the horrific December 16, 2012 gang rape in Delhi, prepared a report that drew from the observations of members of the women’s movement among...

-NDTV New Delhi: The Supreme Court Collegium -- a panel of senior judges headed by the Chief Justice of India -- has recommended mass transfer of High Court judges who have been accused of corruption and misconduct.   Judges from the High Courts of Delhi, Karnataka, Madras and Andhra Pradesh figure in the transfer list, sources said.     The list includes CS Karnan, the controversial judge of the Madras High Court Justice who had...