-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 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 NEW DELHI: Roads in Uttar Pradesh claimed around 53 lives every day in 2016, accounting for 19,320 deaths in the year, the highest among all States since the central government started compiling details of road crashes at the national level. Admitting that rising road deaths was a major concern for the state police, UP's additional DGP (traffic) Anil Kumar Agarwal told TOI that road accidents killed more people...

The focus on MGNREGA got renewed when the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley during the presentation of Union Budget 2017-18 increased allocation under the programme to Rs. 48,000 crore (B.E.), up from Rs. 47,499 crore (R.E.) in 2016-17. However, it has been noticed by the Inclusive Media for Change team that nearly Rs. 9,748.7 crore of due payment during the last financial year is still pending, as on 2 April,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The agriculture ministry in consultation with the Niti Aayog has identified a set of nine marketing reforms to ensure remunerative prices to farmers for their produce by reducing intervention of middlemen. The measures are likely to be in place by July and are considered one of the key steps in doubling farmers' income by 2022. "PM Narendra Modi wants these reforms to be implemented by July. We...