-The Hindu 30 participants from eight States take part in the five-day training programme VISAKHAPATNAM (Andhra Pradesh): A five-day national training programme on millets discussed the possibilities of intercropping millets in commercial crops and major millets. Since the area that had been traditionally used to cultivate millets is presently replaced by cash crops like soya, groundnut and cotton intercropping is an option to bring back millets, according to M.L. Sanyasi Rao, Programme Manager...

  A recent report of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) brings forth the dichotomy between digital divide and India’s transition towards a cashless economy. The rural-urban divide in access to computer and internet is quite stark, according to the report entitled 'Key Indicators of Household Social Consumption on Education in India, July 2017 to June 2018'.   The 75th round National Sample Survey (NSS) report on education finds that...

-Economic and Political Weekly The caste (jati)-based practice of untouchability in India, shifting the focus from the victims of this practice, the ex-untouchables (Dalits), to the perpetrators, the non-Dalits is examined by identifying and disaggregating communities that continue to practise untouchability. The second wave of the India Human Development Survey data has been used to generate a socio-economic profile of those who practise untouchability in India, and check the hypothesis that...

-The Indian Express A reworking of curriculum and activities is urgently needed for the age band from four to eight. ASER 2019 report underlines this While the importance of good early childhood education has been known for a long time, the draft New Education Policy (released in June 2019) links the “severe learning crisis” to what goes on with young children in India. The voluminous policy document points out that close...

-The Indian Express In Odisha, procurement of paddy during the ongoing 2019-20 Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) is, for the first time, being done from registered farmers only after Aadhaar-based biometric authentication. FIRST IT was fertilisers, where the NDA government made disbursal of subsidy conditional upon actual sales to farmers getting registered on PoS (Point of Sale) machines in retail outlets. That reform measure — to ensure that the benefit of minimum support...