-Niti Central India's western State Gujarat does not have a fertile land and most of its landscape is arid, even then the State has taken a big leap in agriculture sector by maintaining nearly 9 per cent of agricultural growth rate for nearly last one decade. Gujarat has written a success story despite being faced with challenges like depletion of water table, deterioration of soil and water conditions due to salinity...

-The Hindu Business Line How ‘Protected Cultivation' can help prevent crop damage due to national disasters While the first green revolution managed to make the nation self sufficient the next round of reforms certainly needs to address the problems faced by today's farmers. According to statistics available on Indian Council of Agricultural Research, India reaped a record foodgrain production of 259.32 million tonnes (mt) in 2011-12. However, the output fell to 257.13...

-The Indian Express Exposure to television and digital media grew by leaps and bounds between 2005 and 2012. From Naxalbari to the Arab Spring, our popular imagination has seen the youth as the harbinger of revolution that breaks down the bastions of privilege. How do we reconcile this with the decisive victory that modern Indian youth have handed to the BJP, whose manifesto focused on entrepreneurship rather than redistribution? I would like...

-The Goan In the second decade of the 15th century, after the French ruler Charles VI was succeeded by his son bearing his name, a phrase was coined: "The king is dead, long live the king". The phrase literally meant that the transfer of sovereignty occurs simultaneously from the moment of death of an earlier monarch. Over the years, the phrase came to signify superficial change: the more things change,...

-The Business Standard The Planning Commission needs to be replaced by institutions prescribed under the Constitution for the functions it usurped The Planning Commission was a powerful centre of extra-constitutional authority, but not because the Constitution overlooked the need for the roles that it played. The prescription of fiscal flows from Centre to states was assigned under Article 280 to Finance Commissions, set up every five years with what by convention...