-Livemint.com Spoilage and pilferage are not something the country can afford given its low ranking in the hunger index The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently approved a proposal to restructure around Rs30,000 crore of food credit given to Punjab state agencies, allowing for the conversion of cash credit into a 20-year loan at a lower interest rate. The central bank also sanctioned a cash credit limit of Rs26,000 crore for this...

-Hindustan Times Lucknow: The admission process under Right to Education (RTE) in Uttar Pradesh will be conducted online from next academic session for easy scaling, improved transparency and better child tracking. Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has directed the basic education department to introduce the online system, saying it will help in completing the admission process faster. Yadav believes that the online system will help draw more admission forms and more children from...

-Business Standard Exemptions granted on agri income and subsidies provided by the Centre and states are being cornered by big farmers and corporates The Comptroller and auditor general’s proposed audit of exemptions granted to big corporates, companies and even farmers under the head of agriculture incomes has once again rekindled the debate as to whether farm incomes derived from big companies and large farmers should be taxed. According to an analysis done by...

-Livemint.com Pulses are important from the perspectives of food security, environmental sustainability and balanced nutrition Most pulses such as pigeon pea (tur dal), black gram (urad), green gram (mung), field beans (waal), moth beans (matki) and horse gram (kulith) are native to the Indian subcontinent and have been an integral part of our diet for centuries. However, the single-minded focus on cereals over the last 50 years—the green revolution in wheat and...

-The Indian Express The government has failed to provide the right incentives to farmers India’s quest for self-sufficiency in pulses goes back, at least, to 1990-1991, when pulses were incorporated in the technology mission on oilseeds. In 1992, and 1995-1996, oil palm and maize were added to the mission, which was re-christened the Integrated Scheme on Oilseeds, Pulses, Oil palm and Maize (ISOPOM). In 2007, ISOPOM’s pulses component was merged with...