Much to our surprise, a careful relook at the newly released estimates on farm production from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare would reveal that the foodgrain production during the rabi season is likely to fall by almost 1 million tonne between 2013-14 and 2016-17. Please see chart-1. Amidst the celebration of a bumper harvest in the ongoing crop year, it needs to be explained why the rabi foodgrain output...

-The Hindu Court defers petition to June 27 for omnibus hearing The Supreme Court on Friday refrained to order an interim stay on a series of government notifications requiring citizens to have Aadhaar by June 30, 2017, to equally access benefits and entitlements, even as the Centre denied imposing any such ‘deadline” to force people to get Aadhaar. The government was responding to a petition challenging 17 notifications issued by various government departments...

-PTI Madurai: All sand quarries in Tamil Nadu would be closed down in three years and the government would undertake mining, storing and selling of sand at cheaper rates, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edapaddi K. Palaniswami has said. “Sand quarrying will be completely stopped in the next three years. The Government will completely undertake sand quarrying, storing and selling of sand and make it available at cheaper rates,” he said yestreday. Palaniswami said...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The government's price cap on coronary stents has not deterred the health-care industry from continuing to offer hospitals profit opportunities of tens of thousands of rupees on other kinds of stents, concerned doctors and health-care industry representatives said.     The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), the government's price regulator, had on February 15 imposed a cap of about Rs 30,000 on coronary stents. But hospitals can continue to...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...