-The Telegraph Nagpur: The Maharashtra Government has given a slew of private companies permission to conduct field trials of genetically modified crops at state agriculture universities' farms, rejecting its dissenting agriculture minister's suggestion for a public debate first. Before this, no Indian state had allowed field trials of GM crops since October last year, when a Supreme Court-appointed expert panel recommended a 10-year moratorium on such trials - though the court has...

-Outlook Government today reduced minimum export price (MEP) of onion to USD 150 a tonne from USD 350 to boost shipments and check sharp fall in domestic prices that has led to farmers protest in producing states. This is the third downward revision of onion MEP, the benchmark price below which the commodity can not be exported, this month. On December 16, the Centre had reduced it to USD 800 a tonne...

-The Business Standard A quick recap of the intensely fractured debate on GM crops and what the pro & anti arguments are. After nearly a decade of opposition, Environment Minister Veerappa Moily is finally expected to rule in favour of the contentious GM or genetically modified food crops in India. The Economic Times reports that this will "pave the way for the government to submit an affidavit in the Supreme Court agreeing...

-The Hindu Maharashtra accounts for 23 per cent of total slum population, followed by Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal Just under nine million households, or roughly one-eighth of India's urban population lives in a slum, according to data from the latest round of the National Sample Survey Organisation released on Tuesday. The number is significantly lower than the 14 million slum households identified by the Census in 2011. NSSO, like the Census, counted...

-The Business Standard 8.8 million households live in 33,150 urban slums   It might be difficult to believe but there were less numbers of slums in urban India in 2012 than three years earlier. The number came down by 32.3 per cent to 33,150 in urban parts in 2012, compared with 49,000 in 2009, official data issued on Tuesday show. However, at least 12 per cent of the urban population...