-The Hindu Have Emami and Karuturi bitten off more than they can chew in their land quest? Indian companies which invested in controversial deals involving hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Ethiopia have found themselves out of their depth in a fast-growing African economy that is still in the process of building critical transport and irrigation networks. Documents related to one such transaction reveal how Emami Biotech, a subsidiary of the...

-The Business Standard The rural jobs scheme can boost productivity in farm and textiles sector. There is mounting evidence that Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) of 2005, under which 100 days of guaranteed wage employment a year was to be provided to target households, is failing to meet its stated objectives. The total cumulative expenditure since 2005 under the MGNREGA is officially estimated to be Rs 1,50,000 crore, and the...

-The Indian Express The International Monetary Fund’s recent downgrading of the growth forecast for India from 6.2 per cent to 4.9 per cent for 2012, which came on the heels of the decline in the actual growth rate to below 5.5 per cent in the first half of 2012, has brought reforms back to the centrestage of the policy discourse. Which reforms are needed and why? India’s growth trajectory has been unique....

-AFP NURJAHANPALLY: When Mahatma Gandhi took up the baton for home-grown cotton a century ago, he may not have realised the devastating impact its cultivation would have on the land he so loved. Cotton is a thirsty plant and parts of the country are drought-prone. But the intensive farming process for cotton leaches the soil and requires high pesticide and fertiliser use that pollutes further downstream. Now in Warangal, dotted with statues to...

-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...