-The Times of India VIJAYAWADA: Farmers in the proposed Andhra Pradesh capital region are putting up a strong resistance to the AP government's plans of land pooling as many of them were recently declared ineligible for farm loan waiver. According to the initial lists of beneficiaries circulated in local banks, a majority of farmers in the region were declared ineligible for loan waiver thanks to new restrictions imposed by the government. For...

-The Hindu It will be tabled in the winter session of the legislature Bengaluru (Karnataka): To regulate the prices of Bt cotton seeds in the State, the government is planning to introduce a Karnataka Cotton Bill, 2014, at the State legislature session to be held in Belagavi in December. The Bill envisages the constitution of an authority headed by the Director of the Agriculture Department for fixation of prices of Bt cotton seeds...

-The Times of India Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, hereafter BP, have argued for phasing out the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in favour of cash transfers ("Rural Inefficiency Act", ToI, 23 October). It's surprising-and amusing-that two eminent economists have chosen to make a case based on prior beliefs and some sophomoric wordplay ('mis'leading economists), rather than on the available evidence. A survey by one of us of the empirical literature...

-The Times of India COIMBATORE: Horticulture production has surpassed production of food grains in the country for the first time and the Central Government is likely to create further growth in horticulture to ensure that the country can access a balanced diet, said agriculturists at the inauguration of the Indian Horticulture Congress here on Thursday. Field crops like rice, wheat and maize contribute to only 30% of the agriculture production in the...

-The Hindu The failure of Narendra Modi's infrastructure plan reflects the larger failure of the Indian imagination, a mindless enumeration of ideas that have little or no bearing on Indian reality. When much of what is built is a half-baked imitation of disparate items tried and tested elsewhere, it becomes hard to fault Mr. Modi. If the recent image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi swinging on the jhula with Chinese President Xi...