-Frontline Former psephologist Yogendra Yadav, now a member of the political collective Swaraj Abhiyan, recently toured India’s drought-affected districts. He called it a Samvedna Yatra. During the tour, he took note of the agony in rural areas affected by what he calls “one of the worst droughts in independent India” The drought, according to him, has left farmers and the larger rural community in extreme distress, leading to damaging changes in...

-The Times of India KOLKATA: A potato glut and plunging prices have triggered suicides in Bengal's Hooghly, Burdwan and Bankura districts. Hooghly alone reported six of them. Prices have crashed, one kg of the tuber selling for Rs 3 to Rs 4. With the pressure unlikely to ease in the near future, peasants face an uncertain future and are agitating. In 2013, Bengal's farmers reaped a good harvest of 85 lakh tonnes...

-The Hindu   With the world's most toxic air, Delhi struggles to breathe. Although its challenges are many, going forward, the city must learn a few basic lessons from the past The summer of 1857 is well-etched in the Indian psyche as the summer of revolt, of a mutiny against the British. Earlier that year, however, there was a smaller initiative that bears recollection - for it speaks of an unfinished agenda of...

-The Hindu With a plethora of government departments and international organisations putting out so much statistical data in the public space, often contradicting one another, it is the government's duty to clear the air with up-to-date and coherent statistical data linking social and economic indicators Purchasing Power Parity or PPP has validated a long held surmise that the poorer countries are not as badly off as they are made out to be...

-The New Indian Express   BHUBANESWAR: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has asked Malkangiri district administration to submit a detailed report within 15 days on the allegations of irregularities in implementation of Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) programme in two blocks. Taking cognisance of a petition filed by Right to Food Campaign, Odisha, the national child rights panel directed the Collector to investigate into the charges. The petition stated that child...