-The Indian Express The Central government’s move to fix cotton seed prices and trait fees sends wrong signals. 2015 will go down as a year that has seen all the rules of free trade being given the go-by when it comes to agriculture. The lead for it, significantly, has come from the Centre, whether in the form of not allowing exports of onion at below $ 700 a tonne or imposing stockholding...

-The Hindu The National Democratic Alliance government has just introduced a cess of 0.5 per cent on all taxable services for the Swachh Bharat campaign. In February 2016, it will introduce a 2 per cent cess on airfares for all domestic flyers except those flying to remote locations, and international travellers. This cess is meant to fund losses that airlines may incur in connecting to hinterland locations. The Central government loves...

-DNA Indian municipalities can adopt the European Union model to achieve zero landfill disposal Budapest: Today, streets and corners littered with garbage are a common sight in almost every Indian city. What’s more, when municipalities actually pick up the trash, they dump it directly in landfills. Until a few months ago when I moved to Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, I thought this situation was inevitable. Then, I travelled to...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Women have the right to have safe and decent toilets at all convenient places, observed the Bombay high court on Wednesday upholding the "right to pee" for women who are outdoors. "Women have the right to safe and clean toilets which in a way impacts their right to live with human dignity,'' said a bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Revati Mohite-Dere in their judgment. "One...

-The Hindu The research lab claims their idea will be more effective that Delhi's proposed odd-even licence-plate policing. A mid-week work-from-home, rather than licence-plate policing, may be the solution to Delhi’s pollution crisis, suggests the policy arm of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, India’s largest chain of publicly-funded research labs. The Delhi government's plan to impose restrictions on private car usage, to check air pollution, may be harder to implement and...