-The Indian Express New body must retain the Commission's mechanisms for Centre-state discussion The Prime Minister spoke from the ramparts of the Red Fort this morning, putting to rest all speculation about the future of the Planning Commission. I write as a member of 10 years standing of this apex think-tank. The Planning Commission was the brainchild of Jawaharlal Nehru, who created it by cabinet order; it has no legislative sanction. Prime...

-India Today Geography of rice and wheat has been transformed with Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh generating surpluses Almost 50 years ago, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri went on air to appeal to Indians to skip a meal a day. Foodgrain supplies had come under strain after the 1965 drought, and the patriotic ethos cautioned against over-consumption: what you ate left that much less for the rest. Today, it is...

-The Business Standard The Budget missed the chance to articulate its intentions to the farming community; the Prime Minister's Independence Day speech provides another invaluable opportunity Young Indians starting their careers in an environment devoid of hope and opportunity and surviving on dole will be inclined to populist politics. But the farming community expects much more substance from the government, and the Budget was a good example of how populism trumped...

-The Hindu The government deserves congratulations for its firm stand at the WTO, which finds support in Rodrik's trilemma The Princeton don Dani Rodrik is one of the world's leading economists. He is a firm believer in and supporter of globalisation. However, he has also posed a famous "globalisation trilemma." A trilemma describes a situation where only two of three things can hold true at the same time. If any two out...

-Live Mint Kishore says good science needs support from sensible policies to promote sustainable growth in agriculture India faced a Malthusian nightmare when it won independence in 1947: its population was growing at an unprecedented rate while food production was failing to keep pace. A generation of Indians still remembers the precarious ship-to-mouth existence in the first 20 years after independence when we relied on food aid (PL-480) from America and our...