Pawar’s Report Card The Negatives     Per capita availability of cereals and pulses has fallen in last eight years     No improvement in irrigation, 60% of agriculture still dependent on monsoons     Farmers growing cereals, sugarcane, oilseeds and pulses assured higher MSP, but majority don't benefit     Production up, but not productivity. Farmer suicides are on the rise.     Poor market advisory on exports being misused to buy cheaply from farmers and make profits overseas     Pawar...

-The Telegraph The Centre today asked a panel of doctors to outline measures to improve drug approval procedures, three days after a parliamentary standing committee said India’s drug regulators had broken laws, ignoring the interests of patients. The panel announced by the Union health ministry has been asked to suggest steps to improve the procedural aspects of the Central Drugs Standards Control Organisation (CDSCO), the agency entrusted with approving medicines for sale...

-The Indian Express After retrospective taxes, here comes the retroactive cartoon The no-no cartoon was published in Shankar’s Weekly on August 28, 1949 and reproduced in many Shankar collections, including one with a Nehru quote as title that will make his party men squirm today — “Don’t spare me Shankar”. The Congress government has pulled out the cartoon and the textbook that carried it. The cartoon features Nehru himself, standing behind a...

-PTI A group of persons on Saturday ransacked the office of Prof. Suhas Palshikar, who resigned as National Council Of Educational Research And Training (NCERT) adviser in the wake of the row over cartoon of B.R. Ambedkar in school text books. Police said the persons involved in the incident had been invited by Prof. Palshikar for discussion in his office after they raised objections on the cartoon. They later damaged furniture in his...

The Government of India has formally launched the news Guidelines of the MGNAREGA based on the Mihir Shah Committee report. The news guidelines include many new works under conservation activities and it strengthens the hands of the village panchayats and gram sabhas. However, the list of works does not include the activities under the system of rice intensification (SRI) which encourages scientific method of paddy cultivation with better yield in...