-The Indian Express Among the Modi government’s many hits was one crucial miss — agriculture. The Narendra Modi sarkar’s performance in the first year has at least five major achievements and one major miss. To ensure that this neglect does not become its Achilles’ heel, the Modi sarkar will have to focus on and initiate reforms in this weakest link in the chain — agriculture. Else, it will not let the Indian...

-Business Standard Modi's flagship programme faces an uphill task of total irrigation One of the major pre-poll promises of the Narendra Modi government has been his idea of 'per drop more crop', which, in other words, means an extensive network of canals and irrigation facilities for farming. Pradhan Mantri Sinchaee Yojana, initially under the ministry of water resources, got transferred to the department of agriculture and its nomenclature was changed to the Pradhan...

-PTI NEW DELHI: The PMO not disclosing information about expenses incurred on foreign visits of the Prime Minister notwithstanding, a CIC-constituted committee has recommended not only putting out such details proactively by all ministries but regular updating as well. The committee of former Chief Information Commissioner A N Tiwari and Information Commissioner M M Ansari, constituted by the CIC gave its report on "Transparency Audit: Towards An Open and Accountable Government". It referred...

-Livemint.com/ Bloomberg Modi is facing resentment among rural households that became accustomed to large wage increases under his predecessor New Delhi: In the wheat fields stretching across northern India, farmers like Dalvir Sharma are starting to turn on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Sharma, 51, voted for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last year after it promised to stem rising prices in the market. Now he’s struggling to pay back a Rs.100,000 loan...

-Hindustan Times A dominant feature of the first year of Narendra Modi's leadership is the quiet dismantling of India's imperfectly realised framework of welfare and rights, covertly, by stealth.   A declared pro-corporate agenda, such as the land acquisition ordinance, proved politically messy and costly. Therefore, the government resorted instead for an enfeebling of the welfare architecture of the country through a combination of fiscal withdrawals, ignoring even legally mandated obligations.   But this attracted...