-Deccan Herald In the past seven years around 3.2 crore farmers have abandoned farming and taken up menial jobs in the cities. At a time when change is the buzzword on the political landscape, when cities are changing, and the villages are no longer what they used to be; when incomes are rising for an educated few, and when the bottom of the pyramid - those below the poverty line -- are...

-Press Information Bureau The official Wholesale Price Index for ‘All Commodities' (Base: 2004-05 = 100) for the month of December, 2013 declined by 1.3 percent to 179.2 (provisional) from 181.5 (provisional) for the previous month. INFLATION The annual rate of inflation, based on monthly WPI, stood at 6.16% (provisional) for the month of December, 2013 (over December, 2012) as compared to 7.52% (provisional) for the previous month and 7.31% during the corresponding month...

A new report on India's housing sector confirms with facts and figures what has been suspected all along: that despite growing demand for affordable housing, supply side responses have been weak and sluggish. This means even though the housing sector can directly impact employment and income generation, and has multiple forward and backward linkages with various industries, it needs innovative ideas, pro-poor thinking and policy stimulus. (See link below for...

-The Hindu Business Line Clientelism - tying benefits to political choices - cannot work because voting preferences cannot be ascertained. Do parties and their local agents link access to government services and benefits from government welfare schemes to how voters vote, or are expected to vote? This political strategy, which social scientists refer to as clientelism, depends on a massive investment in local leaders who collect information on voters' party preferences, vote choices...

-SunStar.com FARMERS, particularly those growing rice, can help reduce methane emissions into the atmosphere by adopting controlled irrigation or alternate wetting and drying (AWD) technology. Developed by the Laguna-based International Rice Research Institute (Irri), AWD is a technology that allowed rice fields to dry for a certain period before applying irrigation water. Also called controlled irrigation or intermittent irrigation, AWD technology can actually save farmers almost one-third of irrigation water without sacrificing yields....