-IdeasforIndia.in Wrapping up the Symposium on farm bills, Mekhala Krishnamurthy and Shoumitro Chatterjee contend that regulatory reforms are an important but limited part of what must be both a more comprehensive and contextual approach to policy design and implementation. Moreover, when it comes to markets, it is crucial to think through what market regulation can and cannot do and to understand the role that mandis play in India’s agricultural marketing system. Over...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Union cabinet on Thursday approved an ordinance to restore the system of reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs for teaching positions in higher education institutions, with the university or college being considered as one unit instead of treating the department as one. The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers' Cadre) Ordinance, 2019 will restore the 200-point roster system for faculty recruitment under which quotas for...

-The Hindu Trust in official statistics is vital for democracy — the new policy must avoid centralisation David Spiegelhalter, president of Royal Statistical Society in the U.K., gave a most unusual presidential address in 2017. Instead of talking about esoteric statistical techniques, he talked about declining trust in numbers in a post-truth society bombarded by fake news and alternative facts. He recommended to the statistical community that the best way of inspiring...

  As per the Section 16 of National Food Security Act (NFSA), for the purpose of monitoring and review of implementation of the Act, every state shall, by notification, constitute a State Food Commission (SFC). However, based on the minutes of a meeting that was held by the Secretary in the Ministry of Food and Public Distribution on 9th November, 2016, the Attorney General of India has informed a two-judge Supreme Court...

  A French journalist once wrote: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps the same can be said about nutritional status of children in West Bengal at present in comparison to the past. At the time when Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, was entertaining private capital in Singur and Nandigram, the rate of undernutrition was quite high in his state. A little less than...