India is likely to harvest a record 16.5 million tonne pulses this year. This was announced by the Agriculture Minister, Shri Sharad Pawar, at the 6th Agriwatch Global Pulses Summit here today. The Minister said that though India presently imports a large quantity of pulses, the use of new production technologies and agronomic practices, and government support will lead to self sufficiency. Shri Pawar said that more aggressive promotion of available technologies...

NDTV, through its foreign subsidiaries, is suspected to be indulging in gross violations of Indian tax and corporate laws. NDTV Network Plc, UK was set up in November 2006. Its balance sheets were not filed in India. This company has raised and invested huge sums of money in its subsidiaries, NDTV Imagine (now sold), NDTV Lifestyle, NDTV Labs, NDTV Convergence and NGEN Media Services. The main activity of the company...

The Niira Radia tapes have firmly put  the spotlight of adverse attention on politics and the media. But surprisingly, the loudest voice of protest—which is also a claim of innocence and a warning that the focus on the mud-smeared keeps attention off the real beasts in the 2G story—has come from India Inc. Ratan Tata, head of the Tata group and Radia’s foremost client, calls the leaked tapes “unauthorised” and...

The heat on telecom minister A Raja is rising, with the Comptroller and Auditor General holding him personally responsible for the sale of 2G spectrum at dirt cheap rates in 2008, resulting in a loss of up to Rs 1.70 lakh crore to the national exchequer. The damning indictment stacks the odds even higher against Raja, who is already under intense scrutiny by the telecom watchdog, civil society and the Supreme...

Take a lesson from Commonwealth Games mascot Shera and “leap ahead” instead of whimpering like a “timorous puppy”, a food rights campaigner has said in a sharp attack on Sharad Pawar. The criticism in a Delhi newspaper has come from Belgium-born Jean Dreze, a prominent member of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council. He is ostensibly riled by reports that Pawar’s food ministry has rejected two of the council’s key proposals...