-The Hindu     Kushti is located at the intersection of sports, politics and culture and is deeply embedded in the agrarian economy. If farming tanks, so does Maharashtra's greatest spectator sport. You'd think it was the turnout for Sachin Tendulkar's final test. Anyone might - seeing close to two lakh people showing up five hours before start of play, despite a nagging drizzle. But this is "below normal" for Kundal town, which hosts...

-IANS A small sugarcane farmer in western Maharashtra, Bhau Kadam (name changed) and his family, own about three hectares of land. He has two sons who are both graduates and work in Pune. When I asked him why he did not make his sons farmers, he says that farming is hard work, is non-remunerative and it is difficult to get labour. Besides he also thinks that farming is not glamorous, a farmer's...

-The Hindustan Times Mumbai: Indian companies have acquired land more than nine times the size of Delhi on foreign shores, as cultivable land at home is lost to urbanisation, industry and infrastructure projects. Land Matrix, a global land monitoring initiative that tracks land dealings worldwide, placed India among the top 10 countries that have acquired large tracts of land abroad, primarily for agriculture, in Africa and Asia. The country ranks eighth,...

-The Economic Times PUNE: Vegetable farmers from Maharashtra, a major producer of vegetables in the country, will not be able to get new seed varieties this rabi season. The seed companies will have to give trials of their seeds on the lands of agricultural universities before seeking licences for marketing them in the state. The Maharashtra agriculture department has made it mandatory for the seed companies to give trial of their new...

-The Indian Express Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has more than one reason to cheer the Raghuram Rajan committee report's ranking of states on composite development. Apart from being put close to the bottom of the ladder in the new index of underdevelopment, Bihar also scores near the top in "performance", that is, the reduction of underdevelopment - a most sensible parameter introduced in the report - far ahead of Narendra...