-The Economic Times Despite the government talking so much about the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana benefiting India's farmers, most of them have not even heard of any crop insurance scheme by the Centre. About 67% of the 6,000 farmers surveyed by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had absolutely no idea about government-run crop insurance schemes. CAG's report dealt with crop insurance schemes from 2011 to 2015, including Prime Minister...

-Hindustan Times/ IndiaSpend A two-year-old project in Rajasthan used an unusual strategy to break this pattern among poor tribal communities. Instead of simply increasing their food supply and access — the standard approach for dealing with malnutrition — it attempted to break the tradition of prioritising men’s needs first. When the women of this southwestern Rajasthan village sat down to eat, it was usually after the rest of the family had finished...

-PTI New Delhi: Social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and others are rapidly changing the reading and viewing habits of an increasing number of people, mostly youngsters, according to Assocham. Based on an analysis of responses from just 235 families, the industry body claimed that Indians residing in big cities are now spending less than half the time reading newspapers and watching television as compared to 3-4 years ago. “While it is...

-Outlook Banks are fleecing customers to shore up their profits and offset the dead weight of bad loans to corporates When the GST era dawned this month, online jokesters quipped that it was the most inscrutable thing ­after Duckworth Lewis. But paradoxically, it may have brought a disquieting clarity to another zone of universal experience. Amid the flurry of news reports detailing what would entail a higher tax of 18 per cent,...

-The Hindu The headline in a recent PTI report “Saving 2 tigers gives more value than Mangalyaan”’ was intriguing, since it said that saving two tigers yields a capital benefit of Rs. 520 crores, while Mangalyaan cost us Rs. 450 crores. The headline was both exciting and hurtful. Excited by it, I contacted Professor Madhu Verma of the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), Bhopal, and she shared with me both...