-The Indian Express There are several measures, such as crop diversification, that can help India achieve this goal Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s desire to double the income of farmers by the year 2022, that he expressed while addressing a farmers’ rally in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, on February 28, 2016, has evoked strong responses from various analysts, experts and the media. The goal has been dubbed as impossible and unrealistic. On the very...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The NITI Aayog will draw up schedules for key social sector programmes to counter the criticism that implementation has been slow even two years after the Narendra Modi government took over. The Aayog's Chief Executive Officer Amitabh Kant made several outcome-based presentations to the Prime Minister last month on sectors such as education, health, rural development and infrastructure. Timelines have been established to achieve progress in areas...

-Frontline The government’s passage of the Aadhaar Bill in complete disregard of even basic parliamentary procedures and in subversion of an ongoing judicial process puts at risk a number of constitutional rights and liberties of citizens. The benefits cited are just ploys to realise a neoliberal dream. “Congressmen are dancing as if [Aadhaar] was a herb for all cures. With the Supreme Court pulling up the Centre, people are now seeking...

-The Indian Express Processes of knowledge diffusion reinforce inequalities. We need explicit pro-poor targeting of efforts There is much enthusiasm today for efforts to improve access to information about poor people’s rights and entitlements. In a much-debated recent example, Facebook’s “Free Basics” platform aimed to provide free access to a selected slice of the internet (including, of course, Facebook). In arguing for Free Basics, Mark Zuckerberg said that “everyone… deserves access to...

-The Times of India It's 8:00 am on a Sunday and outside Denzong Cinema in Gangtok's Lal Bazar, the otherwise languid atmosphere is punctured by grocers of two kinds. On one side of the cinema are those who sell vegetables, fruits and spices sourced from outside Sikkim, mostly from Siliguri, 115 km south in West Bengal. On the other side of the cinema, almost completing a triangle, are farmers from the...