-The Hindustan Times We are a nation holding our breath. Some in eager anticipation, others in ambiguous apprehension or actual terror, but all of us transfixed by the drama of Mr Narendra Modi's arrival. Even those who do not relish the thought of the outcome seem happy to get it over, to put behind us this sad drama of the UPA's strange implosion, the decline, Lear-like, from decisiveness (if wrong-headed at times)...

-The Guardian Rice conservationist Debal Deb grapples with 'mindless Indian elite' to reintroduce genetically diverse, drought-tolerant varieties   Fifty years ago, every Indian village would probably have grown a dozen or more rice varieties that grew nowhere else. Passed down from generation to generation and family to family, there would have been a local variety for every soil and taste - rice that would grow well in droughts or deep floods, which had...

-The Hindu     The aim of the Unique Identification Number was to make access to bank accounts easier but the first Aadhaar card holder is still not eligible for loans In September 2010, Ranjana Sonawane became the first person in the country to get an Aadhaar card when the Unique Identity (UID) project was flagged off with much fanfare in Tembhli village in Maharashtra. But today, what is unmistakeable is the disappointment the tribal...

-The Hindu Restricting the price subsidy to coarse grains alone will not only work better from both fiscal and equity points of view but also weaken the incentives for graft The National Food Security Act (NFSA), passed recently by Parliament, offers 5 kg per person a month of cereals at highly subsidised prices to more than the bottom two-thirds of the population. It has been rightly hailed as the largest welfare programme...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The country's faltering economy is likely to get a significant stimulus from election spending by political parties, candidates and the government which estimates suggest could be as much as Rs 30,000 crore. The figure is comparable to the $4 billion (around Rs 20,000 crore at the prevailing exchange rate) additional spending that the government announced in 2008 to shield the economy from the impact of the...