-FirstPost.com Ram Naresh, who runs a small tea-snacks shop in Navi Mumbai isn’t really keen to discuss politics. “After all, what difference does it make to me? No matter who rules, prices keep going up,” Naresh says. Naresh, hails from a rural village in Uttar Pradesh, is clearly upset with the way prices of Dal and Onion has gone up of late. He gets to save a little from his daily earnings...

-The Indian Express Extended dry spell hits rabi plantings on top of failed kharif crop Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh, an agricultural success story of the past decade, is bracing itself for a rough time this year, with deficient rains resulting in the failure of the kharif crop and also putting a question market over sowing in the ongoing rabi season. The state, in recent times, had emerged as the country’s second largest contributor of...

-The Tribune To ensure stable prices of pulses and attractive returns for producers, policies of domestic prices and tariffs should blend. Import duties must be calibrated with demand. As the Indian economy grows at a rate of 7 per cent plus, assuming low growth as an aberration, the food basket will diversify. Within grains, the movement will be to pulses as shown by the  expert group on pulse production. The yield and...

-FirstPost.com Even as the Narendra Modi government has been making claims that India’s rural economy has gained pace under his rule, empirical evidence suggests that the health of country’s rural economy may not have improved much on account of declining or stagnant income levels. The situation, experts say, is unlikely to change in the near future as there are low chances of a revival in rural income generation. A survey by brokerage...

-PTI Bhubaneswar: With about 14 per cent less rainfall pushing the state into drought, Odisha government today decided to encourage farmers to go for non-paddy cultivation during the coming Rabi season to compensate for crop loss in Kharif season. "Since water levels at reservoirs have dropped due to deficient rainfall, farmers will be encouraged to grow non-paddy crops. Inputs will be provided to farmers by the government and we will inform all...