-The Tribune There has been a big political rush to reform Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC) or agricultural markets. It is now known that most of the problems of the farm sector start and end with agricultural markets in some way or the other. The Model APMC Act 2003 provided a road map for the states to amend their APMC Acts in order to provide choice of channels to farmer for sale...

-Business Standard While the revised estimates of the gross domestic product (GDP) suggest the Indian economy turned the corner in 2013-14, concerns remain over the durability of this nascent recovery. Particularly worrying is the recent slowdown in rural wage growth, which signals a weakening of rural demand. Growth in rural wages, which had averaged 18 per cent in the previous few years, fell to less than five per cent in September...

-The Hindu While liberalisation's backers are not squeamish in admitting that democracy is an impediment to the free market economic model, farmers who are dispossessed of land argue that they are undercompensated and that the profit of private companies is not a public purpose Since it was passed by Parliament in September 2013, the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR) has been criticised from...

-The Pioneer Bhubaneswar: With the increasing demand for building and construction materials in a rapid urbanisation and industrialisation process in the State, the use of minor minerals has been increasing. The housing and road communication projects, both in rural and Urban areas and industrial hubs, have created huge demand for minor minerals that have raised concern for an effective minor mineral management policy. It is a fact that in many areas there...

-PTI Cooperative society employing French technology to cater 2,000 litres of Sulabh Jal to over 300 families a day Gaighata (West Bengal): Once forced to drink arsenic-contaminated ground water, residents of a remote hamlet in West Bengal near the India-Bangladesh border are now purifying water from ponds and selling packaged safe drinking water to neighbouring villages. Using a new innovative technology from France, village co-operative society Madhusudankati Samabay Krishi Unnayan Samity has constructed...