-The Hindu Business Line Surplus stocks, high cost of production among worries Sugar mills in India gear up to start the new crushing season this month with a concern. Sugar production has grown at an annual growth rate of 5.6 per cent over the past two decades, while consumption has grown at 2.4 per cent per annum. In the last five years, consumption of sugar has remained relatively static at about 25...

-Hindustan Times The Union environment ministry has come out with a consultation paper on amending the Forest Conservation Act 1980 to bring significant changes to forest governance in India INCluding facilitating private plantations for harvesting and exploration or extraction of oil and natural gas deep beneath forest land by drilling holes from outside the forest areas. Here are the highlights of the environment ministry’s proposal: Forests on private land Until December 1996, provisions of...

-Livemint.com Real estate must contribute more to our economy and that calls for sectoral reforms and cheap homes Over the past few weeks, the financial and economic world has been worried about the likely collapse of Evergrande, the world’s most-indebted real estate company. At the same time, the bigger issue of China’s dependence for growth on its real-estate sector remains. In a working paper titled, Peak China Housing, Kenneth S. Rogoff and Yuanchen...

-Hindustan Times The country has to develop and adopt more efficient crop production techniques along with favourable marketing policies and price support mechanism. The lack of an assured market is the main reason for the poor availability of pulses India is the largest producer of pulses. SINCe the population has low-INCome levels and people are largely vegetarian, pulses provide good quality protein, and they contribute significantly to the nutritional security of the...

-The Telegraph APCR reproduced an account that sheds more on the ugly backdrop to the police firing and atrocity that followed A delegation of rights defenders who visited Assam’s Darrang district, where a day labourer and a child were killed in a land reclamation drive in a minority-dominated settlement last month, has reconstructed a grim picture of the government and private groups creating a situation that culminated in the police firing. The fact-finding...