In U.P., where 70 per cent of the people depend on agriculture, FDI in retail does not produce any cheer. ON a misty Monday morning in early December in Muradnagar, a small town in western Uttar Pradesh, numerous tractors and trucks, loaded with jaggery and driven by farmers themselves, lined up in front of the smallest grain mandi (market) of the region. With unusual patience, the drivers waited for their...

New drug pricing policy proposes bringing all essential medicines under price control, but makes them expensive After years of dilly-dallying and several Supreme Court reminders, the Centre has proposed to bring all essential drugs under price control. But the policy is nothing but hogwash. Its pricing mechanism would make essential medicines out of reach for most people. Public health experts have termed the draft National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy of 2011 a...

I got a call around midnight in the Delhi summer. It was Lingaram, the young Muria adivasi from Sameli village in Dantewada, then studying in Noida’s International Media Institute of India. Linga’s misfortunes never seem to end: first he was accused of helping the Maoists, then tortured in the police station toilet, forced to be a special police officer, then released thanks to a habeas corpus petition. In a few months,...

-The Business Standard   The government’s move to allow an additional 0.5 million tonnes of sugar exports on top of one million tonnes permitted earlier is well intended. However, the total permissible exports are still not enough to adequately slash unsustainable inventories and improve the economic health of the sugar industry so that it can clear the mounting cane price dues. Given the robust rebound in sugar production in the current season (October...

A host of steel-manufacturing units are keen to set up plants in Karnataka, and all want captive mines. SOUTH KOREA'S Posco is not the only steel-maker keen to do business in Karnataka. The State's estimated 9,000 million tonnes of good-quality iron ore reserves, which is the second largest in India, the State government's assurances on a smooth land acquisition process, the availability of water and the promise of speedy regulatory clearances...