-The Indian Express   Increasing farm production and removing market imperfections would help in controlling prices of commodities, a report has said. The report on 'State of Indian Agriculture 2011-12', tabled in the Lok Sabha, said that the principal factors behind the higher levels of inflation in the recent period are constraints in production and distribution especially in high value items such as pulses, fruits and vegetables, egg and meat. Increase in prices can...

-The Business Standard Cotton export ban was an example of poor policy The government’s sudden move to ban cotton exports – rolled back in less than a week following anger from cotton farmers and adverse political fallout — reflects very poorly on its policy management. The commerce ministry clamped down on exports without clear logic; prior consultations with other ministries concerned were also cursory or non-existent. Unsurprisingly, most players in the cotton...

-The Telegraph Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has sought to address stirrings of disenchantment by using the run-up to the Nandigram firing anniversary to reassure her core constituency that she would not budge from her known positions on land and industry. The chief minister emphatically asserted that her government would not endorse special economic zone (SEZ) status for the Infosys project in Rajarhat. She stuck to her stand that land ceiling would not...

Ten years after the killings in Gujarat, Narendra Modi has neither expressed regret nor has he been held accountable for those mass deaths. Where do we go from here? Anand Teltumbde (tanandraj@gmail.com) is a writer and civil rights activist with the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai.   Just thinking of it, a shiver runs down my spine. I had my own brush with how the Hindutva gangs carried out the...

As non-governmental organisations question the relevance of the World Water Forum being held here this week and slam its "corporate" nature, the United Nations says that a coordinated approach to managing and allocating water is critical. The fourth edition of the triennial World Water Development Report (WWDR), which brings together the work of 28 U.N.-Water members and partners is being officially launched Monday at the Forum. It stresses that water "underpins...