-The Business Standard   The government needs counter cyclical policies to tackle vegflation, which has become a recurrent problem Somebody help. Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley are held hostage, not by jihadists, recalcitrant opposition, international capital or the ever-erratic monsoon, but by faceless, nameless manipulators of Nasik, Navi Mumbai and Azadpur markets. The "raw" terror they have let loose resounds in the corridors of government as well as media power. Cutting to the chase,...

-Mail Today     India is staring at the spectre of a possible drought as the progress of the monsoon has been abysmally slow, with authorities saying cumulative rainfall across the country has been 45 per cent below the average for this period. Reason: the El Nino effect is adversely affecting this year's monsoon, say weather experts. The India Meteorological Department (IMD), in its latest report, has highlighted the weak and delayed onset of...

-The New Indian Express   KARIMNAGAR: With a weak monsoon predicted for this season by weather officials, farmers who want to prepare for Kharif are in a fix. Upland area farmers in Husnabad, Illanthakunta, Sircilla, Bheemdeverapalli, Elkathurthy and some other mandals are facing a miserable situation as they have to depend on rain god and borewells in the absence of irrigation facility. Those farmers in other areas and depending on canals, local tanks...

-The Business Standard     Foreign direct investment in the NGO sector is, in fact, no different from the cross-holdings and the FDI web of the corporate world  ClimateWorks, one of the two international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) recently restricted by the National Democratic Alliance government from funding Greenpeace India Society in India, also funds another NGO, Global International, which, till recently, was headed in India by Union Environment and Forests minister Prakash Javadekar. When...

-The New Indian Express   RAICHUR: The rains have let down the farmers of the district who are unable to start ploughing or sowing, particularly in rain-fed areas. Of the three lakh hectares of cultivable area, sowing has not started in even a single hectare. Of the 1,64,950 hectares of rain-fed areas, 1,42,150 hectares are irrigated by Tungabhadra left bank canal (Tungabhadra river) and Narayanpur right bank canal (Krishna river), but thanks to the...