-Livemint.com The BJP’s ability to balance the demands of its upper caste and tribal voters in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan will shape the election results in December Will the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) successfully tide over anti-incumbency in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan? Or will the Congress manage to return to power in these states and gain momentum in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections? The answers to these...

-Livemint.com The production of ‘mahua’ is finally entering the formal economy as new initiatives seek to upscale this indigenous drink, selling it across the country and even the globe It is a cloudy morning in Nangur village in Bastar district, Chattisgarh. It is a settlement of a little over 400 families, considered fairly large in these parts. We make a bumpy journey down a narrow, unpaved road intermittently shaded by sargi (sal)...

-Firstpost.com Ludhiana: North India’s smog problem — a cause of much tension between states — seems to have left politicians, farmers and even experts stumped. In Punjab, the government’s measures to tackle stubble-burning have reaped little dividend, as the farmers, many of them debt-ridden, say that at the end of the harvesting season, they are still left with no option but to set paddy straw on fire in order to clear their...

-The Times of India AHMEDABAD/ VADODARA: Angry at the rape of a 14-month-old girl in Sabarkantha district of north Gujarat on September 28, hate crimes targeting Hindi-speaking people have now spread to central parts of the state. Eight contractual workers were allegedly attacked at the ‘Bal Amul’ plant near Anand late on Sunday night. With the situation worsening, chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar called up their Gujarat counterpart Vijay Rupani...

-The Times of India KUSHINAGAR, UP: The two sons of Sonwa Devi were very ill and hungry for days until they died, almost together, on September 14, unaware of the fact that the government, far away from their wretched lives in the eastern UP district, had celebrated September as National Nutrition Month to mark India’s fight against malnutrition. A few kilometres away, in Rakba Dulma Patti village, Virendra Musahar and his family...