The third State Finance Commission today recommended that the state provide Rs 2,641.35 crore grant to panchayati raj institutions and urban local bodies for their inclusive growth and capacity building. A 264-page report of various recommendations was presented to Governor M.C. Bhandare and chief minister Naveen Patnaik by commission chairman Sudhakar Panda this afternoon. “We have recommended that the state provide Rs 2,220.25 crore grant to panchayati raj institutions and Rs 421.10...

At a time when other countries are cutting down ethanol admixing with vehicular fuel due to tightening supplies of alcohol, India, oddly enough, is doing the reverse. The Union government has forced the states to raise ethanol doping of petrol from 5 per cent to 10 per cent immediately and has set the target of hiking it further to 20 per cent by 2017, least realising that the sugar industry,...

Post-independence policies have taken away all securities of the small farmer Historically, compared to other developing economies, India has had relatively smaller agricultural land-holdings. Mixed farming and animal tending was the backbone of small and marginal rain-fed agriculture. Diverse food crops along with animal produce ensured relatively balanced nutrition. But policies in independent India reduced diversity while increasing the market dependence of small farms. Small farmers became victims of policies favouring...

The Kerala State Biodiversity Board (KSBB) is organising a national brainstorming session on genetically modified (GM) crops on February 2 and 3 to harness opinion of all States with a view to stamping out GM foods from the country. Agriculture and Forest Ministers of all the States as well as heads of State Biodiversity Boards are being invited to the national workshop. V.S. Vijayan, director of KSBB, said the workshop would...

BHUBANESWAR: Widespread protests marked the visit of Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh, to a national consultation on commercialisation of Bt brinjal. In a novel method of registering their resentment to attempts to allow commercial production of Bt brinjal in the country, hundreds of women under the banner of Orissa Nari Samaj (ONS) took out a funeral procession of Bt brinjal. They set a model of Bt...