-The Hindu Five issues need to be addressed comprehensively if India is to achieve sustained high growth The New Year is always looked forward to with hope, whatever the conditions might have been the previous year; 2018 has been a mixed bag, both globally and domestically. Globally, the growth rate in 2018 was high, particularly in the United States. But strong signs of a trade war emerged, dimming hopes of faster international trade....

-The Indian Express Villagers in western UP have started herding strays to schools in Agra, Aligarh and Mathura. FROM A distance, it seemed as if they were trying to break into Parag Dairy near the Hathras-Mathura highway, repeatedly banging on its locked metal gate. Except, it was a group of desperate villagers from nearby Hardpur, trying to get rid of a truckload of stray cattle Wednesday afternoon. They shouted and argued but...

-The Indian Express Lowering production costs, and a policy shift from ‘managing shortages’ to ‘handling surpluses’, is the way forward for Indian agriculture The government wants farmers’ incomes to double in five years by 2022. While a laudable objective, the reality today is that farmers are suffering stress, if not shrinkage, in their incomes. The demand for loan waivers, and political pressures to implement these, is only a reflection of this...

-The Economic Times With the general election a few months away, the central government has begun crunching the numbers in preparation for a comprehensive programme to help farmers tide over challenges posed by a dip in prices and dwindling incomes. The government is keen on a more substantive intervention than a loan waiver at the central level to alleviate agrarian distress besides stepping up investments in the sector, having concluded that writing...

-The Hindu But shola forests have remained “relatively unchanged” Kochi: The new year heralds bad news for the high-altitude grasslands of the Western Ghats. Over four decades, the country lost almost one-fourth of these grasslands and exotic invasive trees are primarily to blame, find scientists. Though grassland afforestation using pine, acacia and eucalyptus ceased in 1996, the exotics still invade these ecosystems, confirms a study published on January 2 in the international...