-The Hindu Despite its uneven history in India, decentralisation is vital to strengthen participatory democracy, facilitate responsive governance and enable public service delivery. Much has been written on decentralisation in India though, on the ground, there is very little to show despite the 73rd and 74th Constitutional amendments. The rationale for decentralisation comes from the need to strengthen participatory democracy, facilitate responsive governance, ensure greater accountability and enable public service delivery according to...

-The Hindu Business Line India must fight against its food exports being placed under USFDA scrutiny When it comes to free trade, the US is the world’s leading evangelist. However, while the US market overall remains one of the world’s most open markets in terms of access, when it comes to politically sensitive constituencies such as agriculture, the picture changes dramatically. The debate over farm subsidies, of course, is fairly well known....

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: India has raised serious concerns over a proposed US legislation that will require agriculture imports to be mandatorily inspected and Audited by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA). New Delhi fears that once the law is implemented — in about a year from now — it will raise costs for Indian exporters sharply, making exports unfeasible in many cases. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to...

-The Indian Express Indian healthcare providers need to get serious about infection control. A deadly strain of bacterium has doubled its resistance to last-resort antibiotics within a year, according to the report “State of the World’s Antibiotics, 2015”. By an estimate, antimicrobial resistance — the ability of bugs to outwit antibiotics — will claim two million lives in India by 2050, a fifth of the total. India is under pressure to curb...

-The Times of India BHOPAL: At a time when suicides by farmers in Madhya Pradesh following scanty rain and poor yield have brought back focus on their plight, allegedly more than 1.77 lakh ghost farmers benefitted from interest subsidies on their loans. Putting a question mark on the much hyped 0% interest farm loan scheme of the state government, a series of RTI queries by TOI revealed that between 2007-08 and 2012-13,...