-The Hindu Business Line Radha Mohan Singh, the Union Agriculture Minister, lent vocal support to genetically modified (GM) crops on Friday stating that technologically enhanced seeds could help India realise its food security ambition and believed it held great promise in minimising productivity losses particularly on account of abiotic stress factors like floods and drought. "While agriculture feeds the nation, seeds feed agriculture... Bt Cotton in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Election Commission is in the process of sending donation details of all political parties to the Central Board of Direct Taxes for a probe by the Income Tax authorities to ascertain whether entities making contributions were genuine. But what has rattLED the poll watchdog is the huge expenditure made by some of the leading parties during the Lok Sabha elections in March-May last year, disproportionate...

-DNA New Delhi: An analysis of the elected candidates in the recently held Delhi polls has shown that a number of MLAs with criminal cases has gone down from previous elections, with only 24 (34%) contenders declaring the same. A breakdown of the numbers, in a study conducted by the Delhi Election Watch and the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has shown that this number has reduced marginally, with 25 out of...

-The Hindustan Times Bengaluru: A report released by the Catholic Secular Forum has documented 120 attacks on Christians and their institutions across India in 2014. The report, which was made available to HT, lists five murders across India in little over a year. Madhya Pradesh (23) and Chhattisgarh (19), both BJP-ruLED states, along with Congress-ruLED Karnataka (14) account for nearly half of all incidents across India. Between December 2013 and December 2014, 7,000...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The performance of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Rajasthan was debated for its stupendous performance in the initial years of the scheme, but also for the relative sharp decline after 2010. Based on a large representative primary survey, this paper argues that the decline in performance of this scheme in Rajasthan is not entirely due to the lack of demand. Instead, the supply-driven top-down nature of...