-The Telegraph New Delhi: The government's ban on cattle and buffalo sales for slaughter in animal markets will hurt not just meat sellers but also farmers across communities and could spark a milk shortage, meat dealers today said. "This is a very impractical move. It is totally anti-farmer," said Yusuf Quraishi, president of the Uttar Pradesh unit of the All India Jamiat-ul-Quraish. Most of those engaged in slaughtering animals are Muslims from...

-The Pioneer While the Government has done its bit to boost the output of pulses, it has done little to check the nexus between politicians and grain traders For several decades, production of pulses in India has fallen substantially short in terms of consumption. This persistent deficit has led to intermittent bouts of spike in prices as imports (needed to plug it) have often come after lag and have failed to reach...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: An umbrella organisation of publishers of educational books has pointed out that a 12 per cent tax has been levied on children's colouring books whereas "semi-pornography" books have been exempt under the goods and services tax, drawing attention to the perceived contradictions in the new levy regime. "Semi-porn for free, but pay for colouring books," the Federation of Educational Publishers in India (FEPI) has titled its short media...

Much to our surprise, a careful relook at the newly released estimates on farm production from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare would reveal that the foodgrain production during the rabi season is likely to fall by almost 1 million tonne between 2013-14 and 2016-17. Please see chart-1. Amidst the celebration of a bumper harvest in the ongoing crop year, it needs to be explained why the rabi foodgrain output...

-BBC Why are millions of women dropping out of work in India? The numbers are stark - for the first time in India's recent history, not only there was a decline in the female labour participation rate, but also a shrinking of the total number of women in the workforce. * Nearly 20 million Indian women quit work between 2004-05 to 2011-12 * The labour force participation rate for women of working age declined...