-The Times of India KHARAGPUR: A patch of 14 acres in Kenthia village of Kharagpur-II block, which was written off by everyone, has suddenly turned lush green. Go closer and you will see paddy, soybean, groundnuts, sweet corn and sesame plants there. The Kenthia experiment started with three departments of IIT-Kharagpur - agriculture and food technology, biotechnology and industrial engineering - about six months ago. The challenge was to turn a barren patch...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Changiram, a farmer from Kota's Darbheeji village, had sown his four-hectare land with wheat, investing around Rs 80,000 in seeds, fertilizers and labour. He expected to earn around Rs 4 lakh. But unseasonal rains and hailstorms in March damaged more than 70% of his crop, leaving him insolvent and staring at a bleak future. Changiram's plight mirrors that of tens of thousands of farmers across the...

-The Financial Express A forensic report prepared for the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) shows over a third of India's top 500 companies, including those in the top 100, are "managing" their accounts. It finds that companies where promoters hold more than 50% of total shareholding are more likely to take such steps to impress markets with their performance. Both domestic companies and subsidiaries of multinationals listed in India show similar trends...

-The Asian Age The much-quoted sentence, "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics", was attributed to the 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli by American author Mark Twain. Although Researchers could never find such a statement in any written work of Disraeli, the sentence gained universal popularity to signify how economists and other number-crunchers use the "persuasive power" of figures to make a political point or...

-India Today "The butterflies will show you the way to the farm." Farmer Sunil Gupta is not talking of mythical butterflies that will appear to guide me to the organic farm I am trying to locate amidst swathes of farmland, some lush with the standing paddy, some damaged in parts from last week's strong winds, others dotted with vegetable patches or freshly ploughed for the next crop. Can one tell an organic...