-The Times of India blog The hyper-patriotic heat over Indo-Pak aerial battles is diminishing. Other issues are getting more attention. The Election Commission has notified polling dates, so its model code of conduct for political parties is in force. This says no new projects or welfare schemes can be announced or implemented before the election. What does this imply for the pre-election PM-Kisan scheme, announced in the budget? Pre-election budgets are usually...

-The Telegraph The party dubbed false the government’s claim that over 10 crore families will get insurance cover up to Rs 5 lakh for a premium of only Rs 1,100 a year The Congress on Saturday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much-hyped health scheme, Ayushman Bharat, was built on the wrong foundation, allowed corporates and private hospitals to mint money and INCentivised fraud. The party also dubbed false the government’s claim that...

-Scroll.in They observed that data unfavourable to the government was getting revised or suppressed on the basis of questionable methodologies. A group of economists and social scientists on Thursday urged the Indian government to restore the integrity of statistical organisations as their national and global reputation was “at stake”. Any data unfavourable to the government “seems to get revised or suppressed on the basis of some questionable methodology”, they said, citing some...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Flagging the deadly impact of air and water pollution that annually claims at least nine million lives globally, a new UN report on Wednesday called for urgent action to save humanity from the disastrous consequences of environmental degradation. It warned that cities and regions in Asia, middle-east and Africa could see millions of premature deaths by mid-century if the nations fail to drastically scale up environmental...

-The Indian Express Agrarian crisis is an opportunity, for the government that assumes office after elections, to enact a law giving farmers the right to sell any quantity of their produce to anybody, anywhere and at any time. The German obsession with sound currency has been conditioned by the collective memory of the Great Hyperinflation of 1922-23, just as American intolerance to double-digit unemployment and stock market crashes is traceable to...