-The Indian Express Healing the sugar sector and curbing inflation need brave reform. The first month of great expectations is over. But no magic is possible in such a short period of time. The treasury is scraping the bottom of the barrel, and reviving growth calls for herculean efforts to put the economy back on the rails. Meanwhile, fears of an impending failure of the monsoon have spiked inflation, which is at...

-The Economic Times The ills of Indian agriculture are many and well documented: highly fragmented land holdings, inadequate mechanisation, low quality and quantity of inputs, high dependence on monsoons, and so on. But the sector may do better in the future. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's success in raising the pace of agricultural growth in Gujarat and his government's intention of introducing agri reforms-the recent raising of import duty on sugar, meant to...

-NDTV After the Intelligence Bureau controversially concluded that Greenpeace India is "a threat to national economic security", the government asked for tighter controls on moving funds from abroad into the NGO's accounts. NDTV has learnt that one of the blacklisted foreign donors, the U.S.-based Climate Works Foundation, has helped fund projects run by the government in Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Intelligence Bureau said in its report...

-The Business Standard   Food Corporation to restrict procurement of foodgrain from states announcing additional sops In a crackdown on the practice of states announcing bonuses on the minimum support price (MSP) for wheat and rice, the Centre has said Food Corporation of India (FCI) will restrict procurement of foodgrain from such states. This will be effective from the coming rice procurement (October 2014-September 2015) and wheat procurement (April 2015-March 2016) seasons. If states...

-The Hindu   A welter of problems may be in store for the country These are testing times for the Narendra Modi government in the farm and food sector: the south-west (June-September) monsoon is delayed, deficient and weak; kharif sowing, much of which is rain-fed, is lagging by over 17 per cent over last year; rising food prices are pushing up inflation and pulling down growth. Right now the prices of only perishable...