-The Hindu To prevent further damage to the economy and to relieve distress, demonetisation should be revoked immediately Without adequate preparation or thought, the monetary authorities and the government have taken a drastic step declaring as worthless over 86 per cent by value of the currency notes in circulation with the public. A prior large increase of lower denomination notes should have been ensured through banks and ATMs, so that overall money...

-Firstpost.com Think of it as a 50-over one-day cricket match, with each day equivalent to an over. The  game has just begun. The government of India, popularly known as Modi sarkar, has just created a 50-day hawala window for those with black money – albeit in a loose sense. The term hawala is usually used for illegal trade in foreign exchange going back to the times before 1993 when India had tight...

-The Hindu Personal data of 1.5 crore PDS beneficiaries laid bare without password protection Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala government may have compromised the privacy of Public Distribution System beneficiaries, by making available their personal information online. Personal data such as monthly income, electoral card details, consumer numbers of power and cooking gas connections of 1.5 crore residents were published on the Civil Supplies website, throwing open the possibility of misuse by private companies and...

-TheWire.in Swayam Shikshan Prayog, a Maharashtra-based non-profit, is helping women become clean energy pioneers, in an initiative that has earned them a UN climate award. Varsha Pawar of Osmanabad district in Maharashtra was like any other housewife till she started selling solar cook stoves and lamps in her neighbourhood a little over a year ago. Life was never the same again. Today, she is the sarpanch (village council chief) of Tirth Khurd,...

-Livemint.com Pulses are important from the perspectives of food security, environmental sustainability and balanced nutrition Most pulses such as pigeon pea (tur dal), black gram (urad), green gram (mung), field beans (waal), moth beans (matki) and horse gram (kulith) are native to the Indian subcontinent and have been an integral part of our diet for centuries. However, the single-minded focus on cereals over the last 50 years—the green revolution in wheat and...