-Livemint.com Kerala govt’s aim is to build 500 sq. ft houses costing Rs4 lakh each, for which the state has tweaked the centre’s housing programme, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Bengaluru: Building free houses for all the homeless in Kerala -- more than half-a-million at last count -- is one of the flagship projects of the Communist government. A cabinet meeting held on Tuesday night offers glimpses into the project’s nitty-gritty. The aim...

-The Indian Express Unless government takes bold decisions on agri-markets, reducing production costs and increasing demand, its goal to double farmers’ incomes by 2022 will remain a pipe-dream. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one of the best orators in Indian politics today. He is not only coherent and inspiring but connects with his audience well. He is ambitious and committed to fast-track the economy. He sets high targets and drives government machinery...

-Hindustan Times Increasing rates of girls’ education, proactive government investments in adolescent girls, and strong public messaging around the illegality of child marriage and the harm it causes attributed to the shift. From one in four to approximately one in five, child marriages have seen a decline world over in the past 10 years, a Unicef report released on Monday said. The proportion of women who were married as children decreased by 15%...

-TheWire.in Environmentalist and water management expert Ravi Chopra says river inter-linking will sow the seeds for future conflicts between states. There is nothing new about the proposed river-interlinking project being pushed by the government, and this ‘unnecessary excess’ of a project will create more problems than it promises to solve, says environmentalist and water management expert, Dr Ravi Chopra, the director of People’s Science Institute, Dehradun and a managing trustee of the...

-The Times of India Nineteen-year-old Radha Dhanewale is one of the most eligible brides in Maharashtra’s Solapur. Families of prospective grooms arrive at the family’s tiny house every day. It’s not her education, horoscope or income that puts her at the top of the list — it’s a ‘bidi card’ she holds. “I have rolled bidis with my mother since my school days. A few years ago, I got a bidi card from...