-The Hindu In Goa, victorious MLAs fielded by every major party are facing criminal cases, whereas 37 (93 per cent) of the 40 newly elected members of the Assembly are ‘crorepatis,' compared to 55 per cent in the 2007 elections. Goa once again has only one (3 per cent) woman MLA. The analysis released on Saturday by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch is based on the information supplied by...

-The Business Standard Is river interlinking really worthwhile and viable? The Supreme Court’s startling directive to the Centre to set up a “special committee” to expedite river interlinking, which the Court declared was in the “national interest”, has caused the grandiose project to be, once again, closely examined. The idea has been fashionable in fits and starts; it was conceived as far back as the 1970s, and was promoted by the National...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can be devastatingly polite: when Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari, who has a commercial interest in agriculture, wrote him a doomsday letter on the dire state of agriculture under UPA rule, Dr. Singh took a month to reply, but when he did, it was to tell the BJP president in excruciating detail about the rise in agricultural production during his tenure in office, which compares...

-The Economic Times After emerging as one of the pioneers in the investment regions of petroleum products and information technology, Andhra Pradesh is now weighing the benefits of promoting an Agribusiness Investment Region (ABIR) involving major agri clusters in three of its geopolitical regions.  The proposed ABIR project in Andhra Pradesh, to be taken up in a public private partnership (PPP) model, involves setting up an integrated infrastructure for rural business and...

-The Economic Times Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday assured industry that the Centre is making renewed efforts to open up foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail, despite Uttar Pradesh (UP) election results where the winning Samajwadi Party has opposed FDI in retail in its manifesto.  Singh told a delegate of senior members of industry body Assocham that the Centre is taking fresh efforts to evolve consensus amongst the various stakeholders on...