Farmers in Maharashtra flock to 
a new breed of aggressive leaders Its name in Marathi means edge of the hill, but Dongarkada has no hill or mountain in its vicinity. What the village in Maharashtra's Hingoli district has is a cooperative sugar factory controlled by Congress leader Ashok Chavan. Though the Adarsh Housing Society scam rocked the state and forced him to resign as chief minister, the village remains loyal to...

One of the great achievements of India is our free and vibrant press. This is an accomplishment of direct relevance to the working of democracy. Authoritarianism flourishes not only by stifling opposition, but also by systematically suppressing information. The survival and flowering of Indian democracy owes a great deal to the freedom and vigour of our press. There are so many occasions when, sitting even in Europe or in America,...

-PTI In a relief to Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy, a vigilance probe has found he had no role in the palmolein import corruption case in the early 1990s when he was finance minister in the then UDF ministry headed by late Congress veteran K Karunakaran. In its report filed in a special court on Saturday, Vigilance and Anti-corruption Bureau (VACB) said its investigation did not come across any proof that suggested Chandy...

About 51.54 lakh ryots lost investments Farmers in the State have suffered crop damage in a whopping 85.6 lakh acres during the 2011 kharif season, 44 per cent of the total 1,94,65,000 acres area cultivated. About 51.54 lakh farmers, including 48.33 lakh small and marginal ones, have lost the investment almost completely. In a report submitted to the State government recently, the Department of Agriculture has put the requirement of input subsidy, compensation...

-Express News Service Food Securities Bill will make wheat available for Rs two per kg, jowar for Rs one per kg and rice for Rs three per kg but this will affect work culture and labourers won’t be available for work, said Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar at the annual general meeting of Vasantdada Patil Sugar Institute and Maharashtra State Sugar Industries Association. “The government should not decide the sugarcane prices and...