Average per capita net availability of foodgrain declined in every five-year period of the 'reforms' without exception. In the 20 years preceding the reforms — 1972-1991 — it rose every five-year period without exception. The country's total foodgrain production is expected to touch a record 250 million tons this year (2011-12). Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar PTI, February 17, 2012 Record foodgrain output of 235.88 million tons in 2010-11. Sharad Pawar, PTI, April 6, 2011 India's foodgrain...

-The Telegraph The controversial poverty data from the Planning Commission has a message for Mamata Banerjee: the Marxists have brought down the number of destitute in Bengal but much more needs to be done. Latest data suggest that the number of poor has dipped by 7.5 percentage points in Bengal between 2004-05 and 2009-10, which covers the last five years of Left rule in the state. Poverty in urban areas in Bengal came...

-The Business Standard Public discussion on falling poverty hits a new low The Lok Sabha was adjourned for a short duration on Wednesday following an uproar over the government’s latest figures for poverty. This follows widespread public outrage at those figures. A dispassionate observer of this discussion may be led to conclude that either poverty has risen dramatically or the government has somehow fudged the figures inexcusably and obviously. Elsewhere perhaps,...

India's decision this month to produce Germany-based multinational Bayer's anti-cancer drug Nexavar, in the first use of "compulsory licensing" in South Asia, will save lives but also raises intricate questions. Under the compulsory licensing process, a government can under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules bypass a patent owner's rights after three years and order the manufacture and sale of life-saving medicines at much cheaper cost than by obtaining the medicine from...

-The Economic Times   The Supreme Court has declined to reconsider its ruling that the tax authorities had no jurisdiction to tax Vodafone's offshore acquisition of its Indian mobile unit, handing what could be a pyrrhic victory to the telecom major. The tax demand, government officials familiar with the case said, could be revived once the provisions in the Union Budget seeking to tax overseas deals are approved by Parliament later this...