-Hindustan Times Water management should be at the heart of all smart city planning. While there is a lot of emphasis on transportation and infrastructure development, water management remains limited to treatment of waste water, quality monitoring, and smart metering in the government’s smart cities strategy. No clear plans have emerged on how smart cities are to be linked with their water catchments to ensure sustainable provision of water. More clarity is...

-Scroll.in India’s first chief statistician, Pronab Sen, is now country director of the International Growth Centre, which seeks to build effective growth facilities through engagement between policymakers and researchers. In this interview to Scroll.in, he speaks on the 50 days of demonetisation, its failings, its severe impact on the poor, the loss of credibility of the Reserve Bank of India, the push to make India a cashless or less-cash economy, and...

-The Indian Express For farmers, the main source of their woes is a bumper crop. If 2015 was the year of arhar (pigeon-pea) – retail prices of the milled dal scaled Rs 180-200 per kg levels in October and contributed hugely to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s defeat in the Bihar Assembly polls – 2016 is set to close with the humble legume virtually disappearing from the public radar. The new crop, which has...

-Livemint.com Prices may dip further once the harvest from Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh hits markets in January New Delhi: After moong, prices of arhar, a major rain-fed kharif crop, have plunged below support prices in major growing states such as Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh where the crop has reached markets. The dip in wholesale prices follows a record crop due to a normal south-west monsoon and farmers increasing its acreage, taking a...

-Down to Earth Government’s policy decisions and ground reports are in conflict with official data on sowing, production and Agriculture insurance The Centre’s claim of 94 million metric tonnes (MT) (2015-16) of wheat production, good sowing acreage and success of Agriculture insurance scheme is not in sync with reality as government’s own data do not match Agriculture ministry’s claims.   The data related to increased acreage, bumper production and success of Agriculture...