-The Hindu Farmers in Punjab continue to burn paddy stubble every winter despite a ban on the practice. Jacob Koshy and Vikas Vasudeva report on the compulsions that drive farmers to adopt this method of clearing their fields and the efforts by the State administration to wean them off it The highway to Bibipur, a hamlet about 50 km from Patiala town, cuts through acres of paddy. Some of the rice stalk...

-Livemint.com The production of ‘mahua’ is finally entering the formal economy as new initiatives seek to upscale this indigenous drink, selling it across the country and even the globe It is a cloudy morning in Nangur village in Bastar district, Chattisgarh. It is a settlement of a little over 400 families, considered fairly large in these parts. We make a bumpy journey down a narrow, unpaved road intermittently shaded by sargi (sal)...

-TheWire.in Tea plantations are touted as the country's second largest employer, but as many of them shut down, workers are being cheated by agents who exploit and traffick them. The once-thriving tea gardens in the fertile Dooars region of West Bengal have now fallen on hard times. The tea industry is touted as the country’s second largest employer, but also an industry that undermines labour rights and deprives workers and their...

-PTI The president of the Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association said the order would have an impact on a market worth an estimated 16 billion rupees a year for such drugs, which are produced by both small and large pharma companies. New Delhi: The Indian government has banned 328 combination drugs in a blow to both domestic and foreign pharmaceutical firms, but the ban has been cheered by health activists worried about growing...

-TheWire.in Mexican economist David Barkin on India's neoliberal economics, growing inequalities, agrarian distress and more. David Barkin is Professor of Economics at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. He received his doctorate in economics from Yale University and was awarded the National Prize in Political Economics in 1979 for his analysis of inflation in Mexico. His research has focused on the development of an alternative to the capitalist economic model. In an...