With the order of district deputy registrar Harishchandra Hussey to 16 Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees in 16 talukas to submit a report on the details of cotton purchase made by them during the current season, the spree of buying cotton from door to door in the villages by the private players is set to stand exposed. The price of cotton has increased to Rs 6,000 per quintal in recent past. Expecting...

There is more trouble in store for South Korean steel maker Posco’s Orissa project. Shoreline surveys have found the state’s coastline to be highly erosive. Worse still, 50%, that is 4.8 km of the 9.3 km coastline along the proposed captive port site at Jatadhari is eroding. This is likely to put a spanner in the works for the South Korean company, which has been insistent on a separate captive...

The CPM is planning to field a large number of women candidates in the forthcoming Assembly polls in Bengal in an attempt to fight anti-incumbency and stem the steady slide over the past few years. “We have asked all the Left Front constituents to ensure nomination of women candidates in a large number,’’ CPM Bengal secretary and Left Front chairman Biman Bose said after a coalition meeting this morning. Indicating that the...

While renewable energy was always considered more desirable from the point of view of environment protection, its importance has increased several times in these times of climate change. Solar energy is particularly seen as a very promising source in energy planning for the future in tropical countries like India. Interest in realising the potential of solar energy is fast increasing and organisations which have been pioneers in solar energy are...

The case of the Food Security Bill gets curiouser and curiouser.  What started off as a fight between universalization and targeting has ended (or so it would seem) in a complete victory in the National Advisory Council, Government of India (NAC) for targeting through universalization (if such a thing was possible), with the honourable exception of Prof Jean Dreze, who has to be commended for his ‘note of disagreement’. On...