-The Economic Times This is the time of the year when the country's weakest spots are exposed; despite our high growth and emerging-economy status, we continue to depend on the rains to boost rural incomes and provide a cushion in a slow economy. All eyes are on rainfall in July, which is crucial for the kharif crop that accounts for about half the food grain output. The consequences on inflation are, of...

The railway ministry is helpless about the discomfort of railway passengers in reserved compartments who are outnumbered by passengers without tickets or with tickets meant for unreserved compartments   Last month, my friend’s daughter went on a trip to Corbett Park, which was organised by a Pune-based nature trail group. Although they had booked a Second Class (ordinary) reserved compartment, most of the 30-hour journey was spent in utter discomfort, with people...

-The Hindu A definite acknowledgement of the potential of Aadhar for public service delivery, and especially for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) by Bharat Bhatti, Jean Drèze, and Reetika Khera in their article “Experiments with Aadhaar” (editorial page, The Hindu, June 27, 2012), is a small step for Aadhaar, but a giant leap for the authors! Process re-engineering in government is never easy, there is enormous resistance both...

-Down to Earth   Buy an Indian breed from Australia In June last year, we visited Malaysia on the invitation of the country’s oldest and most active consumer action group, The Consumer Association of Penang, to study the livestock production systems and to advise on how these can be transformed into more sustainable and less industrial farming systems. The past 40 years of aggressive industrial growth in Malaysia has seen small-scale peasant agriculture and...

-The Telegraph When the deadly gas was spreading havoc in Bhopal, Arjun Singh was hundreds of miles away — praying. Hours after the leaking methyl isocyanate gas had left a trail of death in the Madhya Pradesh capital, the state’s then chief minister had taken a flight to Allahabad, where he visited the chapel of his childhood school to pray for “moral courage”. The startling revelation comes in Arjun’s yet-to-be-released memoirs, A Grain...