At a time when other countries are cutting down ethanol admixing with vehicular fuel due to tightening supplies of alcohol, India, oddly enough, is doing the reverse. The Union government has forced the states to raise ethanol doping of petrol from 5 per cent to 10 per cent immediately and has set the target of hiking it further to 20 per cent by 2017, least realising that the sugar industry,...

Sugar, to mix one’s metaphors, is heading for a perfect storm. And this is being made because of our own policies. By the year-end, retail prices of sugar in Delhi and Mumbai may cross the Rs 40 per kg barrier — an almost 150 per cent increase in less than 15 months. And no, you can’t blame climate change or monsoon failures for this. So, what triggered the sugar crisis? In...

KEY TRENDS • As per the information collected by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) upto 31 October, 2017, 41,89,827 claims (40,50,131 individual and 1,39,696 community claims) have been filed and 18,24,271 titles (17,59,955 individual and 64,316 community claims) have been distributed. A total of 36,51,414 (87.15 percent) claims have been disposed off @@ • In the last 10 years, only 3 percent of the minimum potential of CFR rights could be...