-The Economic Times The recent decision of the government to allow FDI in multi-brand retail trade has attracted heated debate and emotive reactions. Though the main consideration for allowing FDI in retail is not its benefit for farm sector, the debate has predominantly focused on threats and benefits to the country's farmers and the farm sector. Interestingly, the main stakeholders, i.e., farmers, have not reacted much to the policy decision and...

-The Hindustan Times West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee will lead the campaign in the Congress strongholds during the ensuing panchayat elections in early 2013. She will lead the Trinamool Congress campaign in the green belt in North Bengal, which has always voted for the Congress. Mamata has  earmarked Congress MP Adhir Chowdhury’s bastion, Murshidabad, MP Deepa Dasmunshi’s base, North Dinajpur, and the late ABA Ghani Khan Chowdhury’s home turf, Malda, now...

-The Telegraph Patna: Farmers in Bihar have set their sights on foreign funds for a change in their fortune though economists have cast a doubt on it. Ask Nitish Kumar, a farmer of Darveshpura village in Nalanda district, who hogged the limelight a couple of months ago with record production of potatoes. Nitish had no one by his side when he was forced to go for distress sale of the same potato, which...

-The Times of India The Syrian Christian who could not speak Gujarati found it difficult to find a paying guest accommodation when he first reached the city of his destiny, Anand. But soon, Verghese Kurien would turn the small Gujarat town into the heart of India's white revolution. In the process, Kurien would also stitch together a cooperative movement of millions of women and farmers into owning a brand which generations...

-The Hindu A 2012 WHO study ranks India third — behind Myanmar and Bangladesh — among countries that fail to provide health cover to people. A 2011 study reported in The Lancet on ‘Healthcare and equity’ confirms this: every year, at least 39 million people here fall into poverty due to private out-of-pocket health expenditure. A vast majority of Indians do not have access to healthcare or essential drugs. By the...