-The Hindu An all-woman team of reporters finds a massive online readership in the Bundelkhand region of northern India A homemade drone is shot down because the police think it belongs to the IS. A temple is built for a dacoit and his wife. A group of Journalists are stalked for months until their story goes viral on the internet, after which a sleepy police station immediately swings into action. Reporting is...

-The Hindu Mumbai: Ex-Chief Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi says a transparent procedure should be followed in the selection process. Alarmed at speculation that Delhi Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi could be appointed Information Commissioner in the Central Information Commission, RTI activist and former CIC Shailesh Gandhi on Thursday shot off a letter to the Centre objecting to the appointment. In a letter to Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha, Mr. Gandhi said: “There are news reports...

-Economic and Political Weekly Biswajit Dhar (bisjit@gmail.com) teaches at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Roshan Kishore (roshan.jnu@gmail.com) is currently a data Journalist with Mint. With the formation of the World Trade Organization in 1995, the United States farm subsidies had moved towards income support, reducing spending on price support measures. The explicit reason was that the WTO had held that the latter forms were more...

-The Indian Express We have turned our back to the intense food and drinking water distress across states India has transformed spectacularly in innumerable ways in the last two decades. One of the least noted changes is in the way the country — governments, the press and people — respond to drought and food scarcities. Back in the late-1980s, many states across India were reeling under back-to-back droughts for three consecutive years, not...

-The Hindu The Health Ministry’s plan for a malaria-free India by 2030 is laudable, but grand pronouncements are meaningless as long as manipulated data distort our knowledge and bad governance impedes genuine attempts to fight the disease This month, the Health Ministry will unveil an ambitious new plan to eliminate malaria from the country by 2030. A malaria-free India certainly sounds like a dream, or maybe an early campaign promise: the disease...