-The Hindu If drought is making many in Osmanabad struggle for survival, it is also boosting a 24-hour trade that thrives on scarcity Bharat Raut spends around Rs.800 a month on petrol — just to fetch water that belongs to him. So do a lot of others in Takwiki village in Osmanabad district in Marathwada. Almost every household in Takwiki (and other villages) has one member locked into a single task each...

-The Hindu Activists allege needless spending Hyderabad: Members of United Forum for RTI (UFRTI) and Its Time to Make a Difference (ITMD) on Sunday demanded a high-level probe into the way the funds of Conference of Parties (CoP 11), the biodiversity meet hosted by the capital last year, were utilised. The members, while addressing presspersons, alleged that “unnecessary expenditure” was taken up by departments, including the police, GHMC, HMDA, APIIC, National Green Corps...

-The Economic Times It is consoling that despite a deficit of 8% in south-west rainfall during 2012-13 compared to its long period average (LPA), agriculture's contribution to GDP growth is likely to be around 1.8%. It is also good news that the revised figure of agri-GDP for the 11th Plan as a whole is 3.6%, up from 3.3% estimated earlier. Gross capital formation in agriculture as a percentage of agri-GDP has almost...

-The Business Standard Railway engineers would help gram panchayats in developing estimates of the work and in training workers Union Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal today announced a partnership between Indian Railways and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in his budget speech. "I thank (Minister of Rural Development) Jairam Ramesh for agreeing to the railways' request to partner in some of the rail-related activities under MGNREGS," he said. Bansal...

-The Indian Express Srinagar: Over a fortnight after Afzal Guru was hanged, an Urdu weekly here has published a letter purportedly written by the Parliament attack convict, in which he tells Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin not to be “ashamed of December 13”. The Parliament attack took place on December 13, 2001. While the weekly, Qaumi Waqar, claimed that its editor, Shabnum Qayoom, had received the letter through ordinary post three years ago,...