-The Business Standard   A proposed move by the Centre to slash natural gas supplies to phosphorous and potash-based (P&K) fertiliser manufacturing units has seen a number of farmer bodies, agro-experts and scientists raise a howl of protest. The move could seriously impact soil fertility, which in turn could hit food production in the country, they warned. Nutrients in soil are necessary to increase overall productivity of agri-commodities to help meet the country’s...

-The Telegraph The All Assam Students’ Union today said it possessed a letter written by the Arunachal Pradesh government to the NHPC in 2005 asking the power company to suspend work at Lower Subansiri hydel project in the greater interest of that state. The Planning Commission has blamed a “communication gap” between state governments of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, NHPC and the protesters over the ongoing stand-off and said that it could...

Government officials went gaga in schools over Global Handwashing Day on October 15, but the Supreme Court ruling on October 18 that directed all states to come up with permanent toilets in every cradle by December 31, 2011, has left them cold. Why? The first they knew was tokenism. The second is a Herculean task. There are no functional toilets in more than half of Jharkhand’s 40,000 government schools. The apex court bench...

A survey conducted across nine states by the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and Allahabad University suggests that the much maligned system has revived, prodded by politics, good governance and the apex court. It also found the poor to be averse to cash transfers Kotri is a mid-sized village in Desuri block (Pali district, Rajasthan), about 15 kilometres away from the nearest large bus stand and market place. We walked to...

The proposed regulations aim to create a new countrywide infrastructure for trading of commodity-based securities in the form of electronic receipts as with equity shares on exchanges A committee under the Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA) has recommended regulatory changes that can effectively control prices of food items, improve lives of farmers and change the warehousing landscape in India. The proposed regulations, drafted in consultation with the capital market regulator, the...