-The Indian Express A smooth GST regime can break inter-state barriers on movement and facilitate direct linkages between processors and farmers After more than a decade of intense discussion and debate, the GST is finally becoming a reality. Although in its current form, it is not as perfect as was originally envisaged, yet it is being lauded as one of the most transformational reforms since 1991. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was humble...

-Livemint.com One-off gains from Income Disclosure Scheme 2016 call for scepticism about any immediate claims of demonetisation having widened India’s income tax net News reports have quoted government officials making claims about a record increase in the number of income tax payers in 2016-17. Should such claims be seen as a success of demonetisation in forcing unscrupulous individuals to become a part of income tax net? An analysis of direct tax collection...

-The Telegraph Jamshedpur: As water scarcity forces many urban residents to rely on tanker dole, a village around 35km southeast of Jamshedpur enjoys piped drinking water 24/7 thanks mainly to self-help. All 1,617 residents of over 300 households of Durku village in Kuldiha panchayat, Potka block, get safe tap water to drink. The reason behind it is surprising. Swajaldhara, a UPA-I drinking water scheme based on self-financing, which largely failed in the country...

-The Hindu How Tiruppur, India’s knitwear hub, is now weaving a green cover for the entire district We moved this tree 15 km on a truck along the stretch between Avinashi and Avinashipalayam.” V. Mahendran points to a hulking tree trunk. “The operation took us nine hours. Even with its branches and most of its canopy chopped off, it weighed more than 40 tonnes.” We are at the Tiruppur Collectorate, and Mahendran,...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...