-The Times of India AHMEDABAD (Gujarat): The CAG's report on Tuesday revealed that the prohibited practice of carrying night soil is still prevalent in the 'developed state of Gujarat'. The auditor has cited cases listed in the 2011 census report. Manual scavenging was prohibited 21 years ago with Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 coming into force. But in Gujarat, this evil practice goes on even...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Air quality in the city is deteriorating every day as agricultural waste burning continues unabated in Punjab and Haryana. Doctors, too, are seeing a jump in cases of acute bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) and asthma. They are advising those who are vulnerable or already suffering from respiratory disorders to avoid going out during peak traffic hours, keeping inhalers handy and, if smog is...

-The Times of India Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, hereafter BP, have argued for phasing out the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in favour of cash transfers ("Rural Inefficiency Act", ToI, 23 October). It's surprising-and amusing-that two eminent economists have chosen to make a case based on prior beliefs and some sophomoric wordplay ('mis'leading economists), rather than on the available evidence. A survey by one of us of the empirical literature...

Despite high prices of fruits and vegetables, India's area under horticultural crops - mainly fruits, vegetables, spices and flowers - has doubled in around twenty years (between 1991-92 and 2012-13). This has resulted in increase in production of horticultural crops nearly threefold (2.8 times). A new report from the Ministry of Agriculture says that the area under horticultural crops during this period rose from 12.77 million hectares to 23.69 million...

-The Telegraph The National Democratic Alliance government is planning to scrap the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The chief minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, had already asked for the employment programme of the MGNREGA under which the state was obliged to provide employment on demand (failing which an unemployment allowance of a specified amount had to be paid), to be downgraded to a mere "food-for-work" programme, where the state...