-PTI NEW DELHI: The Centre has issued directives to cotton-producing states like Punjab and Haryana to ensure timely sowing of the crop and use of only recommended seeds for preventing whitefly attack, which caused significant damage to the crop last year. States have been directed to keep a close watch on the movement of whitefly and ensure timely sprinkling of pesticides to check its menace. "Union agriculture and farmers welfare ministry has issued...

-The Indian Express In Marathwada’s worst-hit districts of Beed, Osmanabad and Latur, households now have an uncompromising priority list of expenses as an economy hit by years of near-total crop failure goes into a tailspin. Beed/ Osmanabad: About 65 kilometres from the cracked earth that was once their source of income, Mandakini Mujmule, in her forties, and her daughter Anita, 21, have spent 16 days in Beed city’s government hospital. Mandakini has...

-The Hindu Business Line The Economic Survey’s efforts to link ‘excess’ labour regulation to this practice do not stand up to scrutiny The Economic Survey has unconvincingly linked the practise of contract labour to an excess of labour regulation — what it calls ‘regulatory cholesterol’. The Survey alleges that to negotiate the regulatory “cholesterol” in labour law firms resort to contract labour. This is a contestable view. According to the Survey, extensive use...

-The Hindu Business Line Mumbai: The newly-launched Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) will bring about 50 per cent of India’s farmers in the crop insurance net and help reduce the prevailing distress in the agriculture sector, according to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. PMFBY is distinct from all earlier schemes in the sense that it not only takes the number of insured farmers to a higher level (from 20 per cent earlier...

-The Hindu The Aadhaar Bill has been passed with no public consultation about the privacy safeguards necessary for such a database and no provision for public or independent oversight. The rights to liberty and freedom of expression cannot survive if the right to privacy is compromised. The Central government has forced the Aadhaar Bill through Parliament in a week. Aadhaar has had an invasive and controversial presence well before the government’s attempt...