-PTI   Reflecting the utmost priority to address farm sector woes, a first-of-its-kind workshop was held on Wednesday at the initiative of President Pratibha Patil where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pitched for raising agriculture output to provide food security to citizens.  At the workshop attended by eight Union ministers, 20 governors, five chief ministers and 37 vice chancellors of agricultural universities, Patil underlined the need for "out-of-the-box" solutions to enhance productivity in rainfed...

Liquor baron Ponty Chadha’s mercurial rise is all ‘Maya’ A reclusive liquor baron may seem like an anomaly in these never-ending good times. But Gurdeep Singh Chadha—better known by the moniker Ponty Chadha—fits the bill. Often called “Mayawati’s financier”, the 57-year-old Ponty has been making large (if silent) waves for the political patronage he enjoys in Uttar Pradesh. Any bottle of liquor sold in India’s most populous state goes through his...

-The Financial Express   Bhim can't understand what he's done wrong.   Before dawn every day he joins hundreds of wholesale traders at Delhi's Azadpur Mandi, a sprawling, chaotic market where trucks blare Bollywood music, porters haul huge brown sacks of fruit and vegetables and hawkers ply tea and cigarettes. His own trade is in rosy red apples, laced with calcium carbide. Bhim says he's been adding chemicals to his apples for years to artificially ripen...

In the last two months, Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) officials have been on the hot pursuit of liquor mafia across the state, but ironically not a single 'syndicate member' has been nabbed in the city. Reason: High political pressure as some ministers themselves are involved in liquor business in the city. As part of the statewide crackdown against liquor syndicate in the past 50 days, ACB officers have so far arrested over...

-The Economic Times   In 2007, 27-year-old Kaushalendra from Bihar shunned the placement frenzy, which would see many of his colleagues earn fat salaries, in favour of a more homespun alternative: Selling fresh vegetables on a push cart to residents of his hometown Nalanda.  Putting together whatever money he had, Kaushalendra began the venture in 2008 and soon started doing well. People didn't mind paying a little more if they saw value in...