-The Hindu After Beef ban, no buyers for old bullocks. AMRAVATI: For the fourth week in a row, Balu Bhalve has returned home dejected. In the sweltering heat, the debt-ridden farmer travelled more than 15 km from his village to sell a pair of old bullocks at Badnera Mandi here on Friday. But the cattle market, abuzz on the weekly auction day even two months ago, presents a grim picture now. Even after...

-The Hindu Business Line   Commerce Ministry asks poultry breeders to assess risk on fresh health concerns New Delhi: India is preparing a second line of defence to protect its domestic poultry industry against competition from cheap chicken leg imports from the US. With the World Trade Organisation recently ruling against India's ban on chicken import from the US on the grounds that it would lead to spread of bird flu, the Commerce Ministry...

-The Business Standard Drugs are unaffordable, but price control is the wrong answer There is little doubt that medicines in India are too expensive for most of the population. For the poorest 20 per cent of Indians, the expenditure on medicines alone is 85 per cent of what they spend on their health, according to the National Sample Survey. A World Bank study on the subject found that just out-of-pocket medical costs...

-Countercurrents.org   The events of last over two decades have shown us, more than before that the efforts of dividing the nation by communal forces have been a major obstacle to social peace and process of development. In India while the communal violence began with the Jabalpur riot of 1961, it is from last couple of decades especially from 1980s that the divisive politics has tried to drive a wedge between different...

-The Times of India BANGALORE: The newly-elected Congress government in Karnataka has decided not to allow a ban on cow slaughter in the state. The Karnataka Prevention of cow slaughter and Preservation (Amendment) Bill, 2012 passed in the state legislature during the BJP rule would be reversed. "We will go back to the Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Cattle Prevention Act, 1964. We will withdraw the bill amended last year," chief...