-Hindustan Times New Delhi: It may sound Ironical for a city that has already ‘killed’ its only source of water and fighting with the neighbours for uninterrupted water supply, but a construction exercise of gigantic proportions is on along the Yamuna floodplains, which green activists say threatens the river’s ecology. Huge machines have cleared over 1,000 acres where tents, hutments, pontoon bridges and a gigantic 7-acre stage is coming up to host...

-Livemint.com Pro-poor and yet not populist can be the single defining strand of this year’s Union budget The run-up to this year’s Union budget, especially the past one week, has taken place in the backdrop of an unprecedented, vicious political confrontation between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition. Together with the hit-wicket tendencies of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), it probably exaggerated the magnitude of every challenge...

-TheHansIndia.com The ongoing drought is fuelling distress migration from districts in Telangana, a trend that was witnessed in the early 2000s. The severe drought conditions for the second consecutive year have led to crop failure, mounting debts, chronic unemployment and failure of the NREGA scheme, especially in the districts of Mahbubnagar, Medak, and Adilabad, forcing large-scale exodus of farmers and others.   The fruits of a people’s movement and the world’s largest anti-poverty...

-Frontline The new crop insurance scheme introduced by the NDA government in an election year does not provide for a comprehensive coverage of all crops, against all forms of damage and at all stages of the crop cycle. IN AN election year, it is but natural that incumbent governments will introduce welfare policies and schemes. But the problem is that distribution of such largesse in a neoliberal dispensation can only be...

-The Hindu Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Secretary Basudeb Banerjee held video conferences with District Magistrates on Tuesday to Iron out the glitches in the government’s distribution of digital ration cards. The meeting took place at the State Secretariat. The development comes after a number of issues cropped up regarding the implementation of the government’s related initiative including delay in the issuing of digital ration cards and confusion among beneficiaries about the...