With its granaries brimming over, the government faces a crippling dilemma: The tab for releasing foodgrain to make way for new arrivals adds up to Rs 20,000-25,000 crore, an unviable addition to the subsidy bill. The government's bind was succinctly outlined by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee when he told a meeting called by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday that vacating food silos will mean a hefty cost at a time...

-The Economic Times Prime minister Manmohan Singh is meeting a group of ministers including Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Food Minister KV Thomas and Commerce Minister Anand Sharma to arrive at a consensus on trade policies especially in sugar and cotton exports. Recently, Pawar had criticized the export policies of cotton and sugar. The sugar export is a contentious issue as even after having a surplus production and international...

But non-farm income keeps economy afloat   New Delhi, April 25: The rural growth story is slowly losing sheen because of inflation and rising input costs. In fact, rural price level is higher than urban price level. The March Consumer Price Index number for rural India stood at 116.3, while that for urban India stood at 114.6. Mr Ajay Sriram, Chairman and Senior Managing Director, DCM Sriram Consolidated Ltd, says the rural growth...

Clinging on to their cultural moorings are monks from Assam's Majuli islands who were forced to relocate in the 1970s With land swallowed by the Brahmaputra, many monasteries of Assam's Majuli island were relocated to the mainland in the Seventies. The lives of the monks have never been the same. Indrakanta Mahanta, the head of the Vaishnava sattra (monastery), Bogi Ai, can't remember when somebody last asked him about Majuli. And there...

-Reuters   PERLE: As a shiny red harvester bounces across the black earth into the first row of sugar cane, excited schoolchildren run after it and several dozen men stand gaping in the wake of its swift progress. It's the first time that Perle, a village on the banks of the Krishna river in Maharashtra state, has seen a machine used for cutting the tough cane. "This machine will harvest my entire field today,"...