India is taking proactive measures and ready to make concessions to ensure a successful conclusion of the Doha round of multilateral trade talks, an official said here Tuesday. Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma is scheduled to meet World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director-General Pascal Lamy, chairs of the sub-groups on agriculture, industrial products and services and ambassadors of various informal groupings at the WTO headquarters in Geneva Wednesday to push for...

Steel giant Posco’s proposal for the largest foreign direct investment in India has failed to pass environment muster with a central panel picking flaws in the process to settle forest rights and approve the shortlisted site in Orissa. Three members of the four-person committee have recommended that the Union forest and environment ministry scrap its approvals while the remaining nominee has suggested that the exercise be carried out afresh. The panel’s recommendations...

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh's crusade against genetically modified or Bt food will get a political fillip as well. Parliament's Standing Committee on Agriculture, currently studying the pros and cons of allowing Bt brinjals or other genetically modified foods, is likely to oppose these on various grounds. The parliamentary panel will give its report during the monsoon session. After holding meetings with various interest groups, the members feel it will not be...

After a significant jump in retail price of potato in the last two weeks due to disruption of supplies on account of heavy rain in northern India, prices are all set to fall because of huge stocks with traders in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, the two biggest potato producing states and expected arrival of the new crop from Punjab next month. Traders in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, who were...

In a first step of its kind, nine private companies have been shortlisted by the Union rural development ministry to develop infrastructure in the rural areas and maintain it for a period of 10 years. The project, envisioned as part of former President A P J Abdul Kalam’s pet scheme, Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA), will see these nine private players undertaking pilot projects in January next year...