-Hindustan Times Bhubaneswar/ Dongargarh: PM Narendra Modi wooed rural India on SuNDAy, inaugurating a rural-urban or Rurban mission at Dongargarh in Chhattisgarh and exhorting Odisha farmers to sign up for his government’s crop insurance scheme. The Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Scheme, aimed at improving basic infrastructure, was launched from the Maoist-hit district of Rajnandgaon. “When we talk of smart cities, why can’t we talk of smart villages? The villages in our country...

-FirstPost.com The high incidence of violence against women and the ensuing public outcry has brought the issue to the forefront of the policy discourse in the last few years, underscoring the need for the government to undertake substantive interventions to address gender based violence. It was against this backdrop that the former Finance Minister, in his Budget Speech in 2013-14 announced the introduction of Nirbhaya Fund, acknowledging that “...As more women...

-TheHansIndia.com The ongoing drought is fuelling distress migration from districts in Telangana, a trend that was witnessed in the early 2000s. The severe drought conditions for the second consecutive year have led to crop failure, mounting debts, chronic unemployment and failure of the NREGA scheme, especially in the districts of Mahbubnagar, Medak, and Adilabad, forcing large-scale exodus of farmers and others.   The fruits of a people’s movement and the world’s largest anti-poverty...

-Hindustan Times Khargone (MP): At a time when the agriculture sector is in distress and farmer suicides have become common, a group of farmers from Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone are making use of social media network to practice modern farming, ensure best prices for their produce, and also prevent crop failure. The group &NDAsh; comprising more than 50 farmers &NDAsh; uses WhatsApp and Facebook to not only stay connected, but also to keep...

-The Hindu Business Line The absence of a strong framework can hold up productivity improvements. But GEAC is better than having no regulator at all The clamour for the state to regulate (as against the powers of the legally maNDAted regulatory agency), field trials of bio-technology seeds for cotton and then mustard, is truly extraordinary. It has serious long-term consequences for the economy. The challenges to the Genetic Engineering Advisory Council’s powers to regulate the...