-The Indian Express After Delhi, it is Maharashtra’s turn to attempt liberating fruits & vegetables from APMC shackles. Pune/ Vashi: Spread over 70 hectares land off the Old Mumbai-Pune highway, it’s a place where more than Rs 10,000 crore worth of fruits, vegetables and other farm produce gets traded annually. But right now, it’s also the scene of a prabodhan, a mass awakening campaign by traders and commission agents that could gather...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: A sharp spike in food articles inflation has led to May retail inflation inching up to 5.76 percent, weakening prospects of any RBI repo rate cut in August. This May 2016 print is higher than retail inflation of 5.01 percent in May last year and 5.47 percent in April this year. Food articles inflation jumped to 7.55 percent in May 2016 from 6.40 percent in previous month. The...

-Business Standard A recent report suggests different ways to eliminate poverty and argues that accelerated growth is the most suitable medicine to reduce incidence of poverty Adding some and modifying some others is how the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is planning to go about its welfare programmes in the coming days. While the Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) is likely to be extended to some private schools, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural...

Situation alarming: More than one-third population hit by drought   The country is facing severe drought for the second consecutive year. Conservative estimates from official sources show that over a quarter of rural habitations are facing drinking water scarcity. Although both India Meteorological Department and Skymet have predicted a more than normal rainfall during June-September, 2016, the water storage available in 91 major reservoirs of the country has declined from 22 percent...

-The Indian Express Punjab’s farmers are losing interest in planting new trees, with prices halving from their peaks. Jalandhar/ Ludhiana: Sandeep Singh Randhawa grew paddy and wheat on his 65-acre land at Talwandi Lal Singh village in Gurdaspur district’s Batala tehsil. That was till the late eighties, when he first planted poplar on the edges of his field. The returns encouraged him to expand the area under these trees — each...