-The Indian Express Budget 2016 has a greater focus on the rural and social sectors. But the challenge will lie in improving delivery systems. Indian agriculture as well as the rural sector have been in distress in the last two years due to deficit rainfall and the decline in global commodity prices. The rural non-agriculture sector, too, has been under stress due to the lack of demand for manufacturing and services. It...

-The Times of India New Delhi: At a time when the opposition is accusing Narendra Modi of creating a cult image of himself and not giving due importance to his cabinet colleagues, the NDA government on Wednesday batted for its ministers and told the Supreme Court that their photos be allowed to be published in government advertisements. Attorney general Mukul Rohatgi requested a bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and P C...

-Business Standard Move comes despite RSS affiliated organisation opposing such regulations Maharashtra government has finalised regulations that will allow it to wrest back control from tribals over the lucrative forest trade in goods such as bamboo and tendu leaves worth thousands of crores annually. This also involves management of potentially 80% of community forestlands in the state after the Union Tribal Affairs ministry’s volte-face on interpreting the Forest Rights Act. The Forest Rights Act...

-Business Standard As many as 47 sedition cases were reported in 2014 across nine States, according to the National Crime Records Bureau The 156-year-old colonial-era sedition law, used against arrested Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the students' union, Jawaharlal Nehru University, has been discarded by the UK (where punishment once included chopping ears), South Korea and Indonesia. Kumar was sent to judicial custody for 14 days, amid violence within and outside a Delhi court...

-Down to Earth Having the highest number of malnourished children in the world, India cannot afford to overlook this fact Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat when he claimed that malnutrition in his state was high because girls had become “beauty-conscious”. In May 2014, he became the Prime Minister of India. Five months into his stint, the National Democratic Alliance government received a survey conducted by UNICEF named the “Rapid...