-Mongabay.com * December 2018 is the official deadline for the land acquisition for the bullet train project but till now not even one percent of the required land is acquired. A court case is already going on in the Gujarat High Court against the land acquisition process undertaken by the Gujarat government. * Despite documents showing that the project has the potential to cause social conflict and have adverse environmental impacts, the...

-Livemint.com Loan waivers and electricity subsidies are band-aids at best; a deeper transformation is needed The past few days have neatly summed up the scale and nature of the challenges facing India’s agriculture sector. First, the provisional agriculture census 2015-16 showed that landholdings have continued their decades-long trend of fragmentation, leading to a further rise in the proportion of small and marginal Farmers. Then, 30,000 Farmers, who had started their march from...

-The Hindu Bhuira's women are coping with the higher workload by creating vastly more flexible family and community structures. And they are simultaneously pushing towards modernity much faster than their neighbours. Everyone in the village sneaks a glance when Upasana Kumari drives her White Maruti 800 to work. “Driving a car is intoxicating,” says Kumari. A winding, muddy, single lane road that starts from the edge of the hillock where Kumari’s house...

-The Times of India KAYAD, AJMER: Minutes before election dates were announced and the model code of conduct kicked in, CM Vasundhara Raje announced free power to Farmers in rural areas in her address at the ‘Vijay Sankalp Sabha’, where the PM also launched his campaign. Her announcement came around 2 pm, just an hour before Election Commission announced the date for the election. The EC had earlier scheduled its announcement for...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: India has informed the World Trade Organization (WTO) that its proposed national agriculture export policy would be consistent with global trade rules. In a meeting held last week to review farm policies of various countries, India’s proposed policy drew attention owing to concerns over its potential impact on global markets. The policy aims to do away with restrictions such as minimum export prices or outright bans as...