-Tehelka If governance is his priority, Narendra Modi has to detach politics from welfare schemes. He has to ensure that the locals are treated as critical stakeholders It is a fight that has raged on for a decade. It is a battle to ensure that poor children and deprived pregnant and lactating women get a nutritious diet. It is a war to rightfully implement the grandiose central scheme, Integrated Child Development Services...

-The Hindu The ‘development’ discourse serves the same purpose as the colonial apparatus but without the bad press. After 67 years of failing to eliminate deprivation in India, is it time to look for new ideas? The Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011, which hit the headlines earlier this month, tells us that half the households in rural India are landless, dependant on casual manual labour, and live in deprivation. By suggesting...

-Business Standard Agricultural marketing reform should first take states on board The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has announced plans for a "national agricultural market" which would involve the integration of 585 major regulated mandis through electronic platforms over three years. Several problems in the current farm marketing system, governed by the monopolistic agricultural produce marketing committees (APMCs), might be addressed if this works: the multiplicity of mandi fees and licences...

-The Indian Express   Socio-economic census data provides valuable pointers — and reality checks — for policymakers    The socio-economic and caste census (SECC) 2011 paints a picture of rural India weighed down by landlessness and lack of non-farm jobs. More than 60 per cent of the 17.91 crore rural households covered under the census qualified as deprived on 14 parameters. This is a set of people who do not own a two-wheeler...

-Deccan Herald Many of India's agricultural practices have barely changed in decades. Reform is long overdue. Nearly a quarter of a century after India launched its first big liberalising reforms in 1991, setting off a new spurt of growth, one area of the country’s economy remains hardly touched: farming. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a 24-hour, state-run television channel for farmers in May, but has fostered no public debate about how to improve...