-Deccan Herald As a railway buff, I love the technology story of the bullet train. However, it is not appropriate for India, in the current configuration as negotiated by Prime Minister Narendra and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail line, for which they laid the foundation stone on September 14. The Shinkansen bullet trains were introduced in Japan in 1964 and traversed the 500-plus kilometre distance between Tokyo...

-The Economic Times Those of us in our sixties, including our prime minister, will remember the goli soda. You used a little wooden gizmo to push in a marble stuck in the mouth of a bottle and guzzled the sweet, fizzy drink with the marble dancing around inside. Then you felt full and happy. But it was mostly gas. It’s feeling a lot like that these days, and PM Narendra Modi must...

-Factchecker.in With a score of 38.6 out of 100, India’s performance on health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Index is the worst among BRICS nations. SDGs are universal targets including ending poverty, hunger and inequality, improving access to health and education among others for all countries by 2030. Created by the international research collaboration Global Burden of Disease, the SDG index calculates the performance of countries on 37 health-related targets of SDGs including under-five...

-Hindustan Times Consumers pay more than 100% tax – central and state levies combined – on petrol and diesel. New Delhi: Fuel prices in India are at a three-year high, although global crude rates halved over the same period, leaving many in the country to wonder why they must continue to pay more for petrol and diesel. The central government says that because states earn more in taxes on petrol and diesel, they...

-The Indian Express In zones of prosperity, agriculture faces crisis, jobs are few, social aspirations don’t match economic realities After Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, farmers from Rajasthan came out on the streets demanding loan waiver and implementation of the Swaminathan Committee report. Protesting against government policies and demanding their share in the country’s development, which they argue have been denied to them, the farmers have shown unity across caste and class lines....