-The Indian Express Government policies could not be framed solely on the findings of international reports, he maintained. EVEN AS he acknowledged that the health impacts of air pollution were “real” and “dangerous”, Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave on Friday contested some of the numbers presented in a new global report, which has identified India as the worst affected country and attributed more than a million deaths in the country in...

-The Indian Express Integration of spot and derivatives markets for farm produce via e-NAM can be a potential game-changer There isn’t much from the recent Union Budget as far as new ideas for agriculture goes, yet it sends out a couple of signals suggesting the Narendra Modi government’s intent to integrate farmers better with the markets. One such signal is the proposal to come out with a ‘model law’ on contract farming for...

-Livemint.com Repeated price shocks take the sheen off horticulture crops grown by small and marginal farmers New Delhi: In the past few years, horticulture crops emerged as a favourite for small growers across the country. 2016-17 marks the fifth straight year when production of fruits and vegetables is estimated to surpass that of foodgrains. This signals a fundamental shift in India’s farm economy towards a growing share of horticulture crops, which now...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Delhi government PLAns to centralise the nursery admission process starting next academic year. The proposal will enable parents to apply to their schools of choice through a single online PLAtform. The government wants to start the process of collecting data from private schools from April this year, and introduce the system for the 2018-19 academic year. Officials said the centralised system will cover all 1,700 city...

-The Hindu Electoral reforms announced in the Budget are not what they are claimed to be — they will neither cleanse our politics nor bring transparency Given his interest in cricket, this must be called Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s ‘doosra’. His announcement on electoral reforms in his Budget speech combined an element of surprise, some degree of deception and a sleight of hand — all that go into a doosra in cricket....