-The Indian Express The move comes despite three rounds of inter-ministerial consultations on the Seeds Bill, during which all ministries agreed to its major provisions, including five recent amendments. It’s not just the Land Acquisition Bill, the NDA government has also put on hold proposed amendments to the Seeds Bill, mainly due to a clause on the use of genetically modified (GM) seeds that it fears would portray it as being...

-Livemint.com With barely weeks left for the to begin its retreat, it is emerging that India will close the year with a deficit much higher than what was initially forecast  Another year and another bad monsoon. What were the odds? The India Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast this year’s monsoon—like last year—to be below normal. At that time, we all hoped that the IMD had got it wrong—the economy was on the...

-Hindustan Times Three years ago, when representatives from Sukhbir Agro approached farmers in Punjab proposing they sell their farm waste to the company to generate bio-energy, no one believed them. “They proposed to buy our waste… We didn’t believe them,” said Amolak Singh, a farmer. However, as the farmers slowly came around to the idea the green benefits of this move became apparent. Every November, farmers in the northern states of Punjab, Haryana and...

-Business Standard Mobile commerce venture AgroStar supplies seeds and fertiliser to farmers. As the company expands, delivery will be a challenge Navinbhai Karsanbhai Patel, a farmer from Navanagar in Gujarat, used to have a hard time securing quality inputs for his four-acre farm. That was before he got to know about AgroStar's offerings. His association with the company, now 18 months old, has resulted in 300 missed calls to the helpline number...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's labour arm has walked out of the countrywide strike that 11 unions had called on September 2 to press for a 12-point charter of demands. A recent government survey had ranked the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) as India's largest trade union body with a membership of 62 lakh. Congress-affiliated Intuc came a distant second with 39 lakh members while the CPI's labour wing, Aituc,...