-Livemint.com The shortfall in pulse production is expected to be around 2 million tonnes this year Under siege over sky-rocketing pulse prices, especially when the crucial Bihar elections are underway, the Centre initially blamed the state governments for the situation at hand for failing to crack down on hoarders. According to news reports, more than 80,000 tonnes of pulses have been recovered in raids across states in the last week or...

-The Indian Express Punjab is a case study in agricultural and economic mismanagement in India From the breadbasket of India, Punjab has become a basket-case economy. Endowed with ample water and good soil, Punjab’s happy, progressive people had a dream that is now a distant memory. Punjab’s decline started with its trifurcation. In its bid to establish a separate identity, the poli-tical establishment obsessed over a religious-political agenda and steered the state...

-Livemint.com Large dairy farms are critical for the next stage of India's white revolution Nagara (Anand): Sunil Patel hardly looks like a dairy farmer in his loafers, sleek glasses and cotton trousers. As he guides me to his farm of 110 cows through the narrow lanes of Nagara, a small village around 60 km from India’s milk capital, Anand, I notice most of the houses have piped natural gas connections. Nagara, like...

-The Indian Express Scapegoating ‘hoarders’ and ‘speculators’ for the spike in dal prices might have been effective in the 1960s. But today, it is only evidence of a rather sloppy conceptual policy framework. The pulse rate of a normal and healthy human body hovers between 60 and 100 beats per minute. There can be problems if it goes any higher — and a serious threat to life over 200 beats per...

-Livemint.com The state is mapping and feeding Aadhaar and biometric information of ration card holders into a server Bengaluru: Karnataka food and civil supplies minister Dinesh Gundu Rao on Wednesday said the state’s fair price shops will go digital within the next three months. The state is mapping and feeding Aadhaar and biometric information of ration card holders into a server. All transactions in the public distribution system (PDS) will have to...