-The Hindu The Centre should step forward and bring both Punjab and Haryana, ruled by the BJP and an ally, to the negotiating table to resolve the crisis over the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal Contemporary India illustrates the tragic paradox of farmers’ politics: they get divided just when they need to unite the most. The last few years have witnessed a deepening of the agrarian crisis in India. This is the moment when...

-Business Standard In the balance hangs the GST Bill, which enjoys some support across the aisle, but has been blocked in the Upper House by the Congress and some of its allies Will this be the year the BJP-led NDA gets a working majority in the Rajya Sabha? Consider that nearly 75 MPs in the Rajya Sabha will retire and be replaced by new faces. Some of them – like Venkaiah Naidu, Nirmala Sitharaman...

-Business Standard Data from past elections suggest that the saffron party gets fewer voters from the poor From postponing a hike in railway fare to promising doubled farmers' income in the next five years, from the prime minister holding a number of farmers' rallies to renewed focus on augmenting rural growth and enhancing allocation for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme in the Union Budget, the National Democratic Alliance government...

-The Hindu Business Line Ten years on, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act endures because it provides the poor a political voice February 2016 marks a decade since India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA) came into force. NREGA is both revolutionary and modest; it promises every rural household one hundred days of employment annually on public-works projects, but the labour is taxing and pays minimum wage, at best. Many charges have...

-The Indian Express Gamlina’s response is just one example of how distant this government is from the lives of the poor and how tokenistic its schemes are. Gamlina Soren, an elected panchayat member in Jharkhand, sounded upset. She had been told by a local BJP functionary that gas cylinders were going to be “gifted” to poor women by the Centre but that they must have a BPL card. “But most poor Adivasi...