-Live Mint   Despite its importance, reform of India's legal institutions has been seen as a ‘second order' issue India is a young nation long ruled by old laws-its police, for example, are governed by such colonial-era statutes as the Police Act of 1861, which predates independence by nearly a century. And its expanding economy requires forward-looking regulatory mechanisms to foster markets while curbing crony capitalism. India is also a nation that must...

-The Business Standard   Or, why our subsidy and tax policies have been almost exactly wrong Thomas Piketty's seminal book on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, comes at a fortuitous time. Although inequality has been a well-discussed issue in India for some time now, the success of the book contributes by sharpening the debate. It complements the McKinsey Global Institute's (MGI) report titled "From poverty to empowerment: India's imperative for jobs, growth,...

-The Guardian   Tamil Nadu farmer produces bumper crop four times larger than average using system of rice intensification An Indian farmer has set a state and possibly a national record for growing rice using a neglected method of cultivation that has been dismissed by academic researchers and received little financial backing from agribusiness. According to Jaisingh Gnanadurai, joint director of agriculture in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, farmer S Sethumadhavan from...

-The Hindu   Forest cover loss has occurred at a period when area under jhum cultivation is declining, suggesting that the land use policy has been counterproductive to forests Two spectacular bamboo dances, one celebrated, the other reviled, enliven the mountains of Mizoram. In the colourful Cheraw, Mizo girls dance as boys clap bamboo culms at their feet during the annual Chapchar Kut festival. The festival itself is linked to the other dance:...

-The Times of India   Prem Das Rai, an MP from Sikkim, knew that development indicators from his state were exceptional. But his office didn't know how to showcase them. He reached out to Swaniti, a Delhi-based not-for-profit organization that has been working "consulting style" with parliamentarians. Their portal called Jigyasa aims to answer questions like Rai's. Rwitwika Bhattacharya, Swaniti's founder-CEO, was surprised at what they uncovered. "I always thought that the...