-The Economic Times NEW delhi: Crop planting this kharif season has so far covered 4.16% more area than a year ago while water levels in the country's 91 major reservoirs are on an average 17.09% higher, show official data. From the beginning of the kharif season in June till September 2, crop planting has covered 1,054.49 lakh hectares, close to the kharif season target of 1,062.50 lakh hectares, according to data...

-The Telegraph New delhi: Academic degrees and certificates are set to go digital. Union human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar today revived a UPA initiative aimed at setting up a national academic depository to provide degrees and diplomas in a digital format. Javadekar, however, dressed up the initiative as a brainchild of the NDA government, saying the depository was a step towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India vision. Unlike the UPA's decision...

-The Hindu Held to account by the Supreme Court, the Central government is using opaque methods to change the key provisions of the employment guarantee scheme and make it targeted instead of universal. There is a pithy saying in Hindi that the elephant has two sets of teeth, one for show and the other to eat. This seems an apt description of the approach of the Narendra Modi government towards the implementation...

-The Economic Times NEW delhi: Big Four ministers in the Narendra Modi government — finance minister Arun Jaitley, home minister Rajnath Singh, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and defence minister Manohar Parrikar — haven't spent a paisa on office improvement. But junior ministers and less-heavy weight ministers, including those affected by the recent Cabinet reshuffle, have been keener on doing up their workplace. ET's RTI questions on office decoration expenses revealed office improvements...

-The Hindu How do various cities compare with each other in terms of crime? The ‘Crime in India 2015’ statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) last week answers these questions. Apart from national and state-level statistics, NCRB also compiles data for 53 major cities which have a population greater than 10 lakh. In 2015, 25 per cent of all crimes registered in major Indian cities that fell under the Indian...