-The Hindu Jaipur: Upping the ante against the Vasundhara Raje government, leading Hindi daily Rajasthan Patrika on Thursday left its editorial blank, with a thick black border, to register its strong opposition to the controversial criminal law ordinance that puts restrictions on the media and gives protection to public servants. The newspaper headquartered in Jaipur, which has already announced its boycott of Chief Minister Raje, decided to leave the editorial blank on...

-The Hindu Business Line Market rates have fallen below MSP levels due to demonetisation hangover, poor offtake Bengaluru: The Narendra Modi government is finding it hard to live up to its promise of doubling farm incomes by 2022 given the challenge it faces in addressing the unremunerative prices of farm produce. The kharif harvest began a little over a month ago, and already the prices of a majority of the crops have slipped...

-The Hindu If we oppose every solution to the problem of air pollution, how will we ever breathe clean air, asks the environmentalist Environmentalist Sunita Narain has been fighting for clean air for decades. The Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, with which she has been associated and now serves as director general, led the shift to compressed natural gas in Delhi, to reduce air pollution. Ms. Narain is on the statutory...

-Hindustan Times Dehradun: Lack of watershed harvesting and monsoon-based farming is the key reason why crop intensity of Uttarakhand is poorer than neighbouring Himachal Pradesh, experts say. The crop intensity is the number of times a crop is planted in an agricultural area. Union ministry of agriculture and farmers’ welfare data, states that Himachal Pradesh reported a 3,100 hectare difference in the crop intensity index between 2012-13 and 2013-2014 while Uttarakhand reported a...

-The Hindu Studies on the Swachh Bharat Mission don’t confirm the government’s claims On October 2, 2017, the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) completed its third year. Over Rs. 60,000 crore has been spent on the programme, but despite its scope and importance, there is very little objective evidence about its performance So far the numbers that have been widely cited by the government are from its own administrative data and the Swachh Survekshan...