-The Indian Express In an article in these columns (‘A fertile mess', IE, December 11), Ashok Gulati says India has landed its fertiliser industry in a mess because of rising subsidies, lagging investment, unbalanced use of fertilisers and diversion of urea for other uses, among other things. He blames it all on administered pricing and subsidy costs, and advocates the increase of urea prices or cash transfer of the fertiliser subsidy...

-Economic and Political Weekly India's scheduled tribes are among the most deprived socio-economic groups and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme has great potential in tribal areas. While the Andhra Pradesh government has made an effort to ensure implementation of the scheme in the scheduled areas, the gap between administrative orders and the grass-roots level is wide. This article lists measures that could radically improve implementation of the scheme...

-Vikalp Once again, India is under pressure from the US to revise its patent law. Anyone familiar with the activities of the United States Trade Representatives (USTR) would know that this is nothing new. It has been among the USTR's primary mandates to use trade restrictions in order to persuade (to put it mildly) countries to strengthen their IPR laws. There is, however, a qualitative difference between the actions it has...

-The Business Standard Chief Minister Rawat calls for bringing in an effective agriculture policy and making efforts to promote farming in hilly areas Dehradun: Uttarakhand has decided to bring a new agriculture policy and launch cluster farming in hilly areas. At a review meeting of the agriculture department held on Tuesday at Bijapur Guest House (the chief minister's residence) here, Chief Minister Harish Rawat called for concerted efforts to promote farming in hilly...

-Business Standard The government to set up a 'Swachh Bharat Kosh' to provide tax and fiscal Incentives The Centre would spend around Rs 2,00,000 crore over the next five years for the Swachh Bharat Mission, said M Venkaiah Naidu, Union minister for urban development. The minister also said the government would set up a 'Swachh Bharat Kosh' to provide tax and fiscal Incentives. The minister said urban India generates about 68.8 million tonnes...