It was not that long back that Baba Ramdev, a Yadav from Haryana, was just a superior yoga instructor with a mass following, a people's Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, whose clientele was at the upper end of the social spectrum. Today, Baba Ramdev heads a yoga and health empire, worth hundreds of crores, with even an island off the coast of Scotland, gifted to him by grateful devotees, to run a...

That Indian firms, some of them backed by the government, have gone scouting for land abroad to farm crops for consumption back home is well-known. Reversing the trend, now many Gulf countries are getting a toehold in India that will allow them to farm here and export the food back. A Bahraini firm, the Nader & Ebrahim Group (NEG), recently tied up with Pune-based Sanghar Group to do exactly that....

For past several weeks, thousands of farmers in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Jharkhand have been left in the lurch. They had planted urd and til crops in a large acreage, and to their dismay no grain formation took place in the standing crop. Unable to bear the economic loss, at least four farmers have reportedly committed suicide. Thousands of farmers have been pushed deeper into economic distress....

He came, he spoke, and he got 54,000 jobs. This was on Day One of his India visit. By the time he flies out of New Delhi on November 9, US President Barack Obama would have charmed his way through to force open Indian agriculture to American corporations . And therein hangs the fate of millions of small and marginal farmers. Top on the agenda is the push to make Prime...

In its zeal to make low-priced food available to as many as possible, the majority on the National Advisory Council may deal a mortal blow to farmers and output, warn farmer groups. The proposal to distribute low-priced foodgrain to 80 per cent of the rural population has nothing in it to incentivise cultivation. Vijay Jawandhia of the Shetkari Sangathana says the least the NAC could have done was to recommend that...