-Tehelka Here are the gaping holes in the argument for FDI in retail. No smooth talk can pave over it TOUTED AS a cure-all for India’s economic ills, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail is at best an anodyne, and at worst, toxic. It is an attempt to lift markets by fabricating sentiment; signalling an economic turnaround without any concrete steps being taken to trim the fiscal deficit or boost manufacturing. All...

-The Telegraph Jorhat: Naglo and Lonliam, two nondescript villages in the Lazo area of Tirap district in Arunachal Pradesh, have taken a path-breaking decision that could stir others like them out of their opium-induced stupor. The two villages have agreed to give up opium cultivation and will sign an understanding with the district administration to that effect when five frontier districts, including Tirap, of the state, bordering Myanmar and China, join hands...

-The Times of India VADODARA/ ANAND: Agri-clinic-cum-agri-business centres that address the needs of Farming families should be set up across the country. Father of India's Green Revolution professor M S Swaminathan advocated this on Monday. Eminent geneticist and member of Parliament in Rajya Sabha, professor Swaminathan said this while delivering the first Dr Verghese Kurien Memorial Lecture at the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA).  IRMA has constituted the memorial lecture series which...

-One World South Asia Reducing incomes, stagnating yields, increasing costs of cultivation, fragmenting of land-holdings and reducing of institutions credit facilities plot the graph of farmers' suicides in India. A national consultation and public hearing on framers' suicides being organised by Action Aid in the capital brought together experts and policy critics to evaluate the progress of government initiatives to respond to the ongoing agrarian crisis. Suicides are only one extreme symptom of...

-PTI The Punjab government is likely to roll out the state’s first agriculture policy by mid-December, aimed to make Farming profession economically viable by suggesting measures to raise farmers’ dwindling income and promote crop diversification. “The farm is expected to come out by mid-December. The draft of the agriculture policy is ready and it has been circulated among experts of different fields to elicit their views and opinions so as to incorporate...