-The Hindu The latest GDP data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) raise more questions than they answer. While on the face of it, the projection of 7.6 per cent growth at constant prices for the fiscal year ending March 31 sounds both attainable and impressive, a closer look at the other sets of numbers, including the third-quarter reading, raises some flags. The pace of economic expansion is estimated to...

-The Times of India New Delhi: All details of government land will be available online by June. A GIS based government land information system is being developed to create a complete land inventory across the country, particularly those owned by Central Government departments and their affiliate organisations. At present, most government departments have incomplete information about land they own, how much has been encroached upon and those that are lying vacant. In...

-The Indian Express Over 1,100 farmers had committed suicide in eight districts of Marathwada in 2015. Pune: The “all-out” efforts — as repeatedly being claimed by the Devendra Fadnavis-led Maharashtra Government — to reduce the constantly rising suicide rates of distressed farmers in Marathwada seem to be yielding little results. The rate of suicides in Marathwada just does not seem to slow down. In the first month of this year, as...

-The Indian Express We have turned our back to the intense food and drinking water distress across states India has transformed spectacularly in innumerable ways in the last two decades. One of the least noted changes is in the way the country — governments, the press and people — respond to drought and food scarcities. Back in the late-1980s, many states across India were reeling under back-to-back droughts for three consecutive years, not...

-The Hindu Business Line It has worked as a rural safety net. But the Centre has other budgetary priorities A decade after the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme came into force, the NDA government has come around to accepting its usefulness — and that, in a difficult agriculture year. Last February, the Prime Minister disparaged the programme for merely digging pits. But only a few days ago, the finance minister...