-India Today The ECI plan to link voter IDs to Aadhaar risks a repeat exclusion of voters, and thus falling afoul of the SC order that forbids denial of service. The Election Commission of India (ECI) is reportedly making renewed efforts to link citizen voter IDs to Aadhaar-the UIDAI's contentious biometric ID, whose creeping overreach was halted by the Supreme Court in September this year. A previous linking effort in 2015, under...

-Livemint.com The farm loan waiver terms make little sense in Punjab where average landholding is over three times the national average Patiala/ New Delhi: All that Jagdeep Singh wants is a few hours of peaceful sleep. The 24-year-old from Sangatpura village in Punjab’s Patiala district had no clue that the morning of 11 December would change his life forever. At six in the morning that day, he woke up to the sudden...

-The Hindu Election jolt makes party look at ways to boost rural income; BJP chief commissions survey The defeat in the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh has made the government go back to the drawing board over the issue of rural distress, and some measures to bolster incomes in the countryside may be announced by the end of the winter session of Parliament. While the problems plaguing the agriculture sector...

-Livemint.com Unless the convoluted arithmetic behind fiscal deficit gets as much attention as headline fiscal deficit number, creative accounting practices will go on Mumbai: The Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has been lauded for its ability to rein in the headline fiscal deficit over the past few years, which has arguably helped tame inflation. However, with reverses in key assembly elections earlier this month and Lok Sabha elections to be...

-Livemint.com Declining income, shrinking farmlands, rise in number of dependents on existing holdings add to farm woes Bengaluru: Since 2000, Karnataka has put nearly 200,000 hectares of farmland to non-agricultural use, including for industrial, residential and infrastructure projects. Besides shrinking farmlands, the number of dependents on existing land holdings have also increased considering little employment opportunities elsewhere. From 1.312 million hectares in 2000-01 (cumulative), the total land put to non-agricultural use has risen...