-The Times of India Believe it or not, the murder rate in India in the past few years has been at its lowest level since the 1960s. Even the absolute number of murders in 2014 was lower than in 1992, the year when the murder rate (number of murders per lakh of population) was at its highest. The counter-intuitive fact emerges from an analysis of data from the National Crime Records Bureau's...

-Livemint.com BJP’s U-turn on the proposed land Act reflects a re-balancing of deeper political forces that are at work in India’s political economy The recent U-turn by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government on the proposed amendment to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (henceforth the land Act), can be viewed narrowly as a Congress victory in the ongoing tit-for-tat game that is short-changing...

-The Financial Express Two years of bad rain makes even Punjab vulnerable When a Punjab is flagged as an area of some risk following bad rain, it is time to get seriously worried. The state may have, as ratings agency Crisil points out in its latest report on Indian agriculture, as much as 98.8% of its cropped area under irrigation, but with a 50.4% shortfall in rain last year and a likely...

-The Times of India HYDERABAD: Desperate to save the standing crop in the face of severe drought, paddy farmers have turned to the animal hormone Oxytocin to salvage the Khariff yield. Oxytocin, which is widely used by farmers in a bid to artificially promote growth in fruits and vegetables, has been banned for use in agriculture and animal husbandry.  According to researchers in Prof Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University here, paddy farmers...

-The Hindustan Times The skyrocketing prices of onions, a key ingredient used in making dishes ranging from curries to biryanis, reflects India’s inability to insulate staples from weather-induced supply disturbances. On Thursday onions traded at Rs 4,900 a quintal (or Rs 49 a kg) at Lasalgaon in Maharashtra, India’s largest wholesale market for the crop. Inadequate supplies have pushed up prices sharply over the last few weeks. Already, retail onion prices have...