-The Telegraph HINTERLAND: Our structural problem — small and marginal rain-fed sustenance farms, over 80 per cent of India’s agriculture sector — remains unaddressed Let’s understand the chronology: before the 2014 general Elections, Narendra Modi promised farmers that he would comply with the Swaminathan Commission formula to arrive at a minimum support price for farm produce: a 50 per cent profit over the production cost. Post Elections, he reneged on the promise...

-Livemint.com Politics in India has been based on caste in recent decades. But a rising middle class and increasing inequality within caste groups is paving the way for a class-based faultline. One cliché looms large in every election campaign in India: that caste politics may finally give way to class politics. But as counting begins on the day of the election verdict, caste subsumes every other factor, even in serious analyses of...

-Livemint.com India has seen several large farmer-led movements. Yet, farm issues have rarely dominated national election campaigns, as Indian farmers remain divided by caste, geography, and class More than thirty years after hundreds of thousands of farmers led by Mahendra Singh Tikait brought Delhi to its knees, a new farm agitation has once again shaken Delhi. A government worried that it might be seen as ‘anti-farmer’ has agreed to reconsider the recent...

-The Hindu Affidavit says that legislators are not bound by specific service conditions like that of government employees. The Central government has told the Supreme Court that it rejected the idea of barring convicted legislators for life from contesting Elections, forming or becoming an office-bearer of a political party. The Union Ministry of Law and Justice said an elected representative of the people cannot be equated with public servants who are banned for...

-Newsclick.in The results show how strong the pull of caste identity is. Nothing else explains why JD-U’s vote share did not shrink disastrously. The Bihar Assembly Elections turned out to be a breathlessly close race, with the National Democratic Alliance pipping the Mahagathbandhan or Grand Alliance to the post. Yet the award for man of the match must go to Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, who took on the combined might...