-PTI Pawar says sugarcane planting has not yet begun in Maharashtra due to the second consecutive year of poor rains Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar on Wednesday said sugar output is likely to decline for the second straight year to 24 million tonnes (MT) in the year starting October 2013 due to an expected lower sugarcane crop in Maharashtra.   In 2011-12 (September-October), the country had produced 26 MT of sugar. However, the output for...

-The Hindu New, more fair and transparent norms for iron ore mining are now being put in place in many States Hit by debilitating mining curbs (including an outright ban in some States) and a clampdown on exports through high duties, India’s iron ore industry today is a pale shadow of what it was for much of the last decade, despite some recent forward movement on restarting iron ore mining in Karnataka,...

-The Hindu A proposed legislation to make the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) a statutory body, the draft of which is in circulation among the States for comments, has made Education Department officials of States apprehensive. They fear that it will result in hundreds of elite schools affiliated to the Board going completely beyond their monitoring mechanism. While the rules of the Right to Education (RTE) Act give an important role...

-The Economic Times Almost every fortnight, Nandan Nilekani knocks on the doors of the Reserve Bank to push his case for making Aadhaar an easy gateway to a bank account. He has reached a frontier that, when crossed, could multiply the number of Indians, untouched by high-street banks, to have accounts. An inexpensive technology to execute this exists: the fingerprint of the person with a 12-digit individual identification number is all a...

-The Hindu Criteria have not been met and blatant attempt to saffronise higher education, say academics and student bodies From a tiny room on the first floor of a small building in a quiet area of Basaveshwaranagar, the Harsha Kriya Foundation runs its affairs. The Foundation has recently got the green signal for setting up the Amrutha Sinchana Spiritual University, first of its kind in Karnataka. Speaking to The Hindu in an office...