Asit Tripathy, Chairman of Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) has pointed out that Indian states need to promote contract farming to ensure that farmers get remunerative prices and assured market for their produce apart from getting freed from the clutches of middlemen. India's national agricultural policy also envisages private participation through contract farming and land leasing arrangements to allow accelerated technology transfer, capital inflow and assured market...

Overwhelming presence of military, paramilitary and police forces gave visiting American diplomat the impression that Imphal was under occupation In an assessment of the situation in Manipur in 2006, American Consul General in Kolkata Henry Jardine wrote that the overwhelming presence of military, paramilitary and police officers contributed to the impression that Imphal was under military occupation. “In ConGen's many interactions, even with some government officials, a reoccurring comment was that...

The Embassy cable suggests a serious crime was committed on Indian soil to which U.S. diplomats were privy. The Prime Minister cannot cite lame arguments to justify inaction. Since politics is a distraction, consider the following retelling of the WikiLeaks tale. An activist dies in a traffic accident. CCTV footage from a bank nearby suggests he might have been murdered but the case is never investigated properly. Three years later,...

Thousands of workers from the state employed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) will protest outside Parliament on March 30. The members,of the NREGA worker union from Punjab, allege widespread corruption in the scheme and poor working conditions. “NREGA was implemented from April 1, 2008. As per rules, job cards should have been made by that time, but even now many workers are running from pillar to...

Training its guns on the state government over the mismanagement of schemes that are being run to provide employment to the poor, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday alleged that officials were siphoning of crores of rupees which should have been be distributed to the poor as remuneration in the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS). “There is a multi-crore scam in the EGS scheme. There needs to be CID inquiry to...