-The Hindu Providing people with a modest basic income instead of subsidies would save public revenue With oil prices falling, it was perhaps a good time to fade out fuel subsidies. All subsidies are inefficient and distortionary, and most are regressive. The same could be said of costly public works schemes as well. By contrast, the debate on direct benefit transfers has moved into a more sensible phase, with the posturing criticism of...

-The Tribune The outlook for all things smart is opening up, including Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA). Varanasi, set to develop as a Smart City, will be a lighthouse for sectors seeking sustainable ways to handle demographic pressures, finite environmental resources and climate change. The Finance Minister's budget speech has promised a hundred smart cities. With urban India well covered, it is the turn now of smart agriculture, equipped both to enhance food...

-The Telegraph Guwahati (Assam): Aaranyak, an Assam-based NGO working for the conservation of nature, has won an United Nations award for its community-based flood early warning system that has benefited 40 villages in flood-prone Dhemaji and Lakhimpur districts. It has won the award along with Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) for the 2014 Lighthouse Activities awards under the focus area of information and communication technology (ICT) solutions. The award was...

-The Indian Express Kolkata: The government on Wednesday passed the West Bengal Land Reforms (Amendment) Bill, 2014, in which the ambit for exemption has been widened. In addition, the government has also been lenient with industrialists who have plans to sit idle with their land. Earlier, while industriaists were allowed to keep the allotted land unused under Section 14Y for a maximum period of three years, under the new law they will...

-The Times of India COIMBATORE: Horticulture production has surpassed production of food grains in the country for the first time and the Central Government is likely to create further growth in horticulture to ensure that the country can access a balanced diet, said agriculturists at the inauguration of the Indian Horticulture Congress here on Thursday. Field crops like rice, wheat and maize contribute to only 30% of the agriculture production in the...