-The Hindustan Times Odisha's Kalahandi district - once the cause of global embarrassment for India due to its high number of starvation deaths - today stands tall with a five-fold increase in its rice production since 1999, figures reveal. The agriculture ministry's recent crop data ranks Kalahandi among the top 25 rice producing districts of India. The three-year average of its rice production ending 2010-11 was 468,000 tonnes, compared with a three-year...

-The Hindu Bhopal: Madhuri Krishnaswamy, leader of Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan (JADS) which works for health and labour rights in south-western Madhya Pradesh, was remanded in judicial custody for a fortnight on Thursday. Ms. Krishnaswamy, popularly called Madhuri Ben, and four others were summoned by Judicial Magistrate First Class D.P. Singh Sewach in Barwani in connection with a 2008 case of rioting and assaulting a public servant. The police had filed a closure...

-The Hindu   An open letter from Madhav Gadgil says Kasturirangan panel report will rob the region of its biodiversity Dear Dr. K. Kasturirangan, J.B.S. Haldane, the celebrated 19th-century scientist and humanist who quit England protesting its imperialistic invasion of Suez to become an Indian citizen, once said: "Reality is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we CAN suppose!" I could never have imagined that you would be party to a...

-The Hindu Farmers say they are ready to return compensation but in instalments Allahabad: Lathi maar maar ke utha lehale anshan wahe/ daktar sahib soochna pahuchain naye mukhyamantri se bataiye da/ hum aapan zamin na dewai/ hame na chahi kuch tumhara. (Police beat protesting farmers and remanded them/We heard a new CM is coming to hear us/Tell him we won't give up our land/We want nothing from you.) This in a mix...

-The Economic Times Arvind Panagariya, a professor of Indian economics at Columbia University, hits out at Nobel laureate and Harvard University professor Amartya Sen over his call to confront MPs with the "number of deaths" a delayed Food Security Bill can cause. The former chief economist at the Asian development Bank counters Sen's argument that it is high social spending that has contributed to the economic growth of Asian economies such...