-The Indian Express The FM’s other ideas for agriculture, especially on Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), which she repeated this year, need to be tested before it becomes a national policy. In her Budget speech, Nirmala Sitharaman spelled out sixteen measures to reboot agriculture and re-affirmed the Modi government’s resolve to double farmers’ incomes by 2022. Agriculture is categorized by her as “Aspirational India”. All these sixteen measures are broadly in the...

-The Hindu The first increase in 27 years assumes significance in the wake of the crisis at PMC Bank Mumbai: The government has decided to increase the insurance cover for bank deposits to ?5 lakh from ?1 lakh, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech. This is the first time since 1993 that the deposit insurance cover has been raised. The Finance Minister assured that there was a robust mechanism in...

-The Hindu State govt. upends park rehabilitation policy, declares 39 displaced families ineligible after 20 years Bhopal: Displaced from his village nestled inside the Madhav National Park in Shivpuri district two decades ago, Jadon Adivasi, 80, still nurses the hope of the promised two-hectare land that he could till, call his own, in another village. “They can’t go back on the promise now. We survived on the hope of owning land for years;...

-The Hindu ‘Barefoot College’s archives bear testimony to Ms. Lindsay’s methodical and painstaking work’ Manya Jayaram Lindsay, younger sister of social activist Aruna Roy, died in Hitchin, U.K., after suffering from cancer in recent years. She had set up the preventive and curative health structure at the Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC), Tilonia — widely known as the Barefoot College — and studied indigenous people in the U.S. and Australia, and...

-The Hindu The FM deserves credit for keeping the capital expenditure steady amid receipts shortfall; but her plan does not meet market expectations of sweeping reforms The Finance Minister’s job is a greatly coveted one but no politician would want to be in Nirmala Sitharaman’s shoes today. The Indian economy has slowed to a 5% crawl. The financial system is under considerable stress. Assumptions about tax revenues have gone awry. The clamour...