Few politicians can match Sharad Pawar when it comes to having one’s finger on the aam aadmi’s pulse, er pulses.At a time Indian entrepreneurs are manufacturing Jaguars and Landrovers abroad, the Union agriculture and food minister wants them to cultivate daal overseas.That would not only help fulfil the growing domestic demand for lentils, Pawar declared today, but also curb the environment-unfriendly dependence on animal proteins.At the sixth Agriwatch Global Pulses...

Edible Oil imports have surged to a record 9.24 million tonnes last year and were estimated to be nearly Rs 38,000 crore. They have emerged as the third most important import item, next only to petroleum products and gold. India is now the world’s largest importer of cooking fats, meeting more than half of its requirement through overseas supplies. Considering the country’s huge and fast-growing demand for cooking Oils, such...

The Radia tapes reveal the networks and routers, the source codes and malware that bind the corporate and political establishments in India. As squeamish schoolchildren know only too well, dissection is a messy business. Some instinctively turn away, others become nauseous or scared. Not everyone can stomach first hand the inner workings of an organic system. Ten days ago, a scalpel — in the form of a set of 104 intercepted...

India's Oilseeds production dipped to 249.3 lakh tonnes in the crop year 2009-10, compared to 277.2 lakh tonnes in the previous year, Parliament was informed today. The country had produced 297.6 lakh tonnes of Oilseeds in 2007-8, Minister of State for Agriculture K V Thomas said in a written reply in Lok Sabha. As a result of the fall in Oilseeds production, the minister said, India has been facing shortage of edible...

This is a real story. In the early 1980s, a senior editor of a national newspaper met a state Congress leader and made a report out of that frank conversation, which made sensational disclosures about the dictatorial way Indira Gandhi was running the Congress at that time. The Congress leader, however, had argued that the entire conversation was off-the-record and, therefore, not meant for publication. The newspaper was in agreement...