Pawar’s Report Card The Negatives     Per capita availability of cereals and pulses has fallen in last eight years     No improvement in irrigation, 60% of agriculture still dependent on monsoons     Farmers growing cereals, sugarcane, oilseeds and pulses assured higher MSP, but majority don't benefit     Production up, but not productivity. Farmer suicides are on the rise.     Poor market advisory on exports being misused to buy cheaply from farmers and make profits overseas     Pawar...

-The Business Standard India's politicians' regrettable response to a 1949 cartoon On Friday, more clearly than ever before, India’s political class revealed its deepest, darkest fear: that someone, somewhere, is smiling. In an enviable feat of cross-party unanimity in this partisan and divided age, India’s parliamentarians decided that a cartoon by that unparalleled chronicler of the birth of independent India, Shankar, was too offensive for a government-sanctioned textbook on modern Indian...

States to be urged to adopt resolutions for pension to elderly Following up its five-day dharna here, the Pension Parishad has decided to intensify political mobilisation for pressing its demand for universal old age pension. Several political leaders addressed the demonstrators during the dharna and the Parishad leaders called on President Pratibha Patil to elicit her support. On Saturday, a delegation will call on UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, who is also the chairperson...

-The Times of India The death of RTI activist Ravinder Balwani following a mysterious hit-and-run incident in the capital has triggered allegations of foul play. The family of the deceased has drawn attention to the numerous death threats Balwani had received in the last one year, about which he had complained to the police. An ex-official of the Delhi Transco Limited and aide of anti-graft crusader Arvind Kejriwal, he used the...

A local court on Wednesday directed Luknow police to register a case of fraud and cheating against Delhi based self proclaimed godman Nirmal Baba alias Nirmaljeet Singh Nerula. Chief Judicial Magistrate Rajesh UPAdhyaya further directed Gomitnagar police to probe the matter and submit the report in the court. The Judge cited a 1999 Supreme Court ruling and said that if a person present himself as godman capable of treating the disease...