-AFP NURJAHANPALLY: When Mahatma Gandhi took up the baton for home-grown cotton a century ago, he may not have realised the devastating impact its cultivation would have on the land he so loved. Cotton is a thirsty plant and parts of the country are drought-prone. But the intensive farming process for cotton leaches the soil and requires high pesticide and fertiliser use that pollutes further downstream. Now in Warangal, dotted with statues to...

-The Hindu "Collusion with Ajit Pawar to get Vidarbha land for his NGO" Training its guns on the Bharatiya Janata Party, India Against Corruption (IAC) on Wednesday alleged that the party president Nitin Gadkari took undue favours from the Maharashtra government in allotment of land acquired from Vidarbha farmers for a “public purpose.” For their generations-old land the farmers were compensated with a paltry sum of Rs. 5,000 per acre in 1981-82. Addressing...

-The Hindustan Times For now, it looks like India Against Corruption member Anjali Damania has had the proverbial last laugh. In the last week of September, when Damania revealed on national TV channel that BJP’s national president Nitin Gadkari had rebuffed her when she went to meet him for helping her in the Irrigation scam, many in the media said this was an act of harakiri for the activist. They reasoned to her that...

-Outlook Mumbai: The Congress-NCP co-ordination committee in Maharashtra today authorised Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan to take decision on increasing the cap on subsidised LPG cylinders from six to nine. NCP state president Madhukar Pichad told PTI after the meeting of the committee that the issue of providing three additional subsidised cylinders was discussed. "We have decided that the proposal will be put before the Cabinet and decision will be taken at the...

-The Indian Express The group of ministers (GoM) headed by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar today cleared the much-delayed Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Bill, after approving some relaxations which addressed the concerns expressed by several ministries. “The Bill is finalised. We have finalised the draft. Each and every issue on which there were different views, we succeeded in bringing some understanding,” Pawar told reporters after the meeting. Sources said the minutes of...