-The Indian Express Why assembly election verdicts should occasion a rethink on loan waivers, MSP raises The results of the elections to state assemblies should be a humbling experience for the BJP. Political pundits have started analysing the verdict, since the reasons for the BJP’s defeat have important implications for the parliamentary election of 2019. One factor that is being flagged by analysts is farm distress. Farmers across the country are not...

-The Telegraph Shortcoming to affect follow-up care Only a fourth of patients with chronic diseases who attend government clinics in India receive all the key information they need for future follow-up care by other doctors, a study has suggested. Only 24 per cent of the outpatient clinic documents the study screened mentioned all four pieces of key information: the diagnosis, prescribed medication, long-term care instructions and follow-up information. The study found that 32...

Just a few days ahead of the Kisan Mukti March in Delhi NCR, the provisional results of the Agriculture Census 2015-16 became available in the public domain. The report, among other things, highlights the long-term problems affecting Indian agriculture including fragmentation of land holdings (particularly the marginal and small ones) and shrinking average size of farm land. The provisional results of the latest Agriculture Census reveal that at the national level...

-The Indian Express In the absence of patience and vision, the loan waiver remains the most favoured response to farm distress Thousands of farmers from different parts of India marched to Delhi on November 29-30 to register their protest against the Narendra Modi government’s perceived apathy and neglect of farmers’ demands. They were basically demanding three things: One, debate in Parliament to discuss farm distress; two, one-time loan waiver; and three,...

-The Hindu Business Line ‘GDP growth rates for 2004-11 were bound to come down’ New Delhi: “You can slice and dice the data anyway you want, but India’s GDP growth rates between 2004 and 2011 were bound to come down in the backcasting computation effort,” said TCA Anant, former Chief Statistician of India. When the new base year of 2011-12 came out, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) had documented and recognised that the...