-Newsclick.in An opaque policy, inefficiency and a flawed target plague this scheme. Over the past twelve months, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has been one of the most-cornered ministers of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, owing largely to her weak and often ambiguous comments on the state of the Indian economy. For her and her supporters, this year’s Union budget was meant to both rejuvenate and rekindle investor’s hopes and sentiments. The...

-The Hindu Business Line The National Seed Association of India (NSAI), which represents top seed companies in the country, on Wednesday suggested some changes in the proposed Seed Bill 2019, including a more scientific definition of transgenic variety, enhanced farmer rights on seeds and enlisting the services of private firms for evaluating new varieties before seed registration. In letters written to Indian Council of Agricultural Research - Director General (ICAR) Trilochan Mahapatra...

-Hindustan Times The nature-development equilibrium is broken, leading to climate disasters. At least 100 people have died in floods in three states in peninsular India — Kerala, Karnataka, and Maharashtra — in August due to monsoon floods. There are several reasons, as reported in a series of articles in Hindustan Times, for the havoc and deaths, such as changes in land-use patterns, excessive quarrying and UNSCientific plantations (Kerala), poor management of dams...

-Newsclick.in The arguments put forward by the two government advocates to disparage the NSSO’s thwarted report only serve to create a smokescreen so that any meaningful debate on unemployment becomes impossible. In 1965, P. C. Mahalanobis, who founded India’s modern statistical system, wrote a famous article titled “Statistics as a Key Technology” in the journal The American Statistician. One argument in the paper was as follows. Prior to the emergence of science...

-The Telegraph Medical leaders and associations must take the lead in issuing effective and clear messages countering fake information Along with the Hippocratic oath, the MBBS curriculum has a mantra: bar God, all must provide data. A good physician treats patients based on scientific principles derived from solid evidence. The physician’s personal experience may embellish or temper these principles, but should not be ‘contrary’ to them. In India, the mantra of scientific data...