-The Hindu The politics of patronage and personality in the State has reduced the electorate to passive recipients of welfare. “The food is good. The place is clean. Actually, I prefer the cleanliness over the menu,” P. Divaraj chuckles. “The real reason I’m here is because it’s the end of the month and I’m running out of money.” A 10-minute walk from his office to Amma Unavagam on Santhome High Road in...

-Livemint.com Panel aims to find ways to diversify risks in farming, examine how integrated farming can boost incomes New Delhi: The central government has set up a panel to suggest ways to double farm incomes by 2022, as promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The task of the inter-ministerial committee will prepare a blueprint to transition farm policies from being production oriented to based on incomes or value addition. The committee will look...

-The Economic Times What's on your plate may be good for you. But, what if the plate itself is nutritious? This is not light-headed talk from going too long without a meal, but an idea that sprouted in the mind of a groundwater researcher-turned-entrepreneur Narayana Peesapathy on a flight. As Peesapathy watched a man pick at his lunch with a cracker after he accidentally broke his plastic spoon, he wondered if...

-Hindustan Times India has the best and the worst medical education in the world, according to a review of the world’s largest database of peer-reviewed literature. Four medical colleges in India are among the top 10 global institutions that published the most research between 2004 and 2014, while around 60% of the country’s 579 medical institutions have published no research in a decade. Only 25 (4.3%) institutions published more than 100 papers a...

-The Hindu Surveys conducted by activists estimate that there are over 1.2 million manual scavengers in India As numbers become data and move from being just a random rearrangement of 0-9, they speak volumes about peoples, nations, and their objectives. They form the basis of government policies, and have the intrinsic potential to change lives, correct historical wrongs and national trajectories. The last election results, we were told, were a message from ‘Aspirational...