-Hindustan Times A potentially “politically-damaging” report on farmer suicides in Punjab will now be released only after the election results on March 11. The state government had commissioned three state universities — Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana; Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar and Punjabi University, Patiala — to study cases of farmer suicides between April 2010 and March 2013. The three had earlier examined cases from 2000 to 2010 for compensation and...

-The Indian Express Indian farmers are facing multiple crises. Punjab’s case highlights their problems. THE ANSWER TO who will form the next government in Punjab is currently sealed in the ballot boxes. Meanwhile, there are reports that the Election Commission has written to the home minister, reinforcing its demand to make electoral bribery a cognisable offence. But what about the assurances made in election manifestos which promise voters the moon before the...

-The Telegraph After the third general elections held in 1962, the scholar-statesman, C. Rajagopalachari, wrote a fascinating, if now forgotten, essay on the imperfections of our young democracy. "The Indian electorate", remarked Rajaji, "suffers from well-known defects from which Western democracies are relatively free. The Indian voters are in great measure poor and vulnerable to bribery: even a day's expense for food serves to buy a large number of the poor...

-The Hindu Business Line They rue voting for BJP in the 2014 LS polls, and swear by Mayawati’s BSP now Jalaun (Uttar Pradesh): The reverse migration triggered by demonetisation has possibly reversed the BJP’s political fortunes in this backward and poverty-stricken region of Bundelkhand. Coupled with agrarian distress, demonetisation-induced reverse migration is pushing voters away from the BJP in the ongoing elections. While the SP-Congress alliance is the frontrunner for upper caste voters,...

-The Hindu Electoral reforms announced in the Budget are not what they are claimed to be — they will neither cleanse our politics nor bring transparency Given his interest in cricket, this must be called Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s ‘doosra’. His announcement on electoral reforms in his Budget speech combined an element of surprise, some degree of deception and a sleight of hand — all that go into a doosra in cricket....