-Business Standard - Capital Market Unseasonal rains accompanied by hailstorms are creating havoc for Indian farmers year after year even as the country faces shortfall in wheat production by around 13 million tonnes from the initial estimates of 93.8 million tonnes in the current crop year and the development may force the government to consider imports of the staple grain as well, according to an ASSOCHAM paper. "The shortfall in production...

-Outlook The structural basis is being laid out for future authoritarianism at the behest of foreign biometric and surveillance technology What distinguishes Barack Obama and David Cameron from Narendra Modi? Obama and Cameron oppose biometric identification but Modi supports it. On 11 May 2005 in the US, the Real ID Act for a national ID was rushed through US Congress and the US Senate with utmost urgency, a legacy of George Bush...

-Business Standard Research says Aadhaar was not necessary for de-duplication exercise What has been the net benefit that arose out of using Aadhaar within the Direct Benefits Transfer of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) or PAHAL scheme as it is now called? Research done by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) says the benefit from Aadhaar in the scheme through de-duplication of records was at best limited to Rs 12-14 crore in...

-Frontline.in The increase in the budgetary allocation for the MGNREGA is only marginal. The scheme helped lower the poverty level by 32 per cent between 2004-05 and 2011-12, but government support for it has been declining steadily. In the beginning, economists belonging to the Right and the Left were of the view that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) was merely a populist measure. While the former believed...

-Hindustan Times Ludhiana: Punjab finance minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa may have announced several perks for the agriculture sector, including provident funds for farmers, financial relief to families in which farmers committed suicides and medical insurance as part of the Budget 2016-17 for the state but several agricultural experts and farmers have pointed out all perks are futile without crop insurance. They stressed that if crop of farmers are not insured by the...