-The Telegraph Guwahati: The Centre today asked Assam to tread the "lab-to-land" route to boost farm output and said an Indian agricultural research institute would be set up in the state. Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said Assam should make optimum use of its soil, which is of the highest quality, on the lines of Pusa (in Bihar where the research institute was incepted in 1905), to boost agricultural output. "Assam has...

-Business Standard A slew of measures taken by the Chhattisgarh government had reportedly helped in enhancing the kharif acreage in the pockets affected by the Naxal violence A slew of measures taken by the Chhattisgarh government had reportedly helped in enhancing the kharif acreage in the pockets affected by the Naxal violence. The authorities have compiled the figure for Narayanpur - country's one of the worst Naxal-infested districts reportedly housing the headquarters of...

-IPS News CHINTOOR, India- Laxman, a 10-year-old Koya tribal boy, looks admiringly at a fenced-in vegetable patch behind his home in southern India's Andhra Pradesh state. Velvety-green and laden with vegetables, the half-acre patch is where Laxman's family gets their daily quota of nutritious food. But one day soon it will disappear under several feet of water, thanks to the Polavaram multipurpose project - a 45-metre-high, 2.32-km-long mega dam currently under construction...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The finance ministry has favoured a proposal to increase the "material" component in projects under the rural job guarantee scheme to facilitate the creation of durable assets. The rural development ministry is, however, having second thoughts, although it had proposed the change in the labour-material ratio from 60-40 to 51-49 for projects under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The scheme, which seeks to provide 100 days...

-The Hindu Hyderabad: The credit plan estimate for 2015-16 for priority sector lending in Andhra Pradesh has been put at Rs.98,679 crore by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, 27 per cent higher than State's credit plan for 2014-15. The plan estimate was unveiled here on Thursday at a State Credit Seminar, which was attended by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, Agriculture Minister P. Pulla Rao and Chief Secretary I.Y.R....