-Livemint.com Mint’s rural distress index is below its median value, but it conceals varying distress levels across states Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s announcement of farm loan waiver has given credence to similar demands from across the country. Those making these demands include political parties, protesting farmers and even the judiciary. An earlier Plainfacts column had pointed out how farm loan waivers can be counter-productive in the long run, a fact...

-Frontline.in Magsaysay Award winning activist and national president of the Safai Karmachari Andolan Bezwada Wilson is a co-petitioner with Major General (Retd) S.G. Vombatkere in a Supreme Court case relating to the Aadhaar project. He raises an important concern about the impact of Aadhaar on people born into oppressed castes, particularly safai karmacharis, or manual scavengers. Excerpts from an interview he gave Frontline: * What is your opinion on Aadhaar? There is no...

-Frontline.in The Aadhaar project’s headlong push towards “total” enrolment of Indian citizens threatens the privacy of individuals on an unprecedented scale, while its patchy biometric system acts as a tool of denial for the most vulnerable. MEAnwhile, the UID chugs along, regardless, fuelled by the avarice of private interests who seek to cash in on citizen data. IN the last seven years, the right to privacy of Indian citizens has been...

-The Times of India JAIPUR: Across the country, payments worth Rs 9,124 crore are yet to be paid for work done in the 2016-17 financial year under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). This comes at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi has created incentive schemes for rewarding those using the digital payment platform. Only days ago, 20-year-old Maharashtra student Shradha Mengshette was surprised to win Rs1...

-The Times of india PUNE: India could have had some relief from the scorching heat early this summer, had it received its fair share of premonsoon showers. As heat singes parts of the country, India Meteorological Department (IMD) data revealed that the country received the lowest pre-monsoon rain in the past four years during March this year. During previous years, since 2014, India received an excess of March rainfall. March 2017, however, witnessed...