Plans to set up 150 farmer-producer organisations in 11 states. The government is planning to provide market linkages for farmers growing pulses as part of a programme announced in the Budget to improve their production, as scarcity of this essential item was one of the major contributors to food inflation a few years back. “The share of pulses growers in the consumer price is very low on account of a lack of...

The ministry will soon introduce a system to get a third party to conduct environmental assessments for projects in ecologically sensitive areas like wetlands or projects that involve multiple sectors, he said. "FRAnkly speaking, environmental impact assessment reports prepared for projects are bit of a joke. Under the system we have today, the person who is putting up the project prepares the report. Even reputed government institutions do cut and paste...

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange says Indian leaders are trying to mislead the public by challenging the authenticity of US diplomatic cables suggesting some MPs were bribed during a 2008 parliament trust vote. "It is not correct to say that all these cables are mere opinions by US diplomats, that is not true," Assange told NDTV's Prannoy Roy in an interview telecast on Monday. "These are official correspondence sent by ambassadors, sent in...

Should the Central government run schools, crèches, pre-schools, dispensaries, employment schemes, the buying and selling of food grains, and build houses, not to speak of selling milk as it does in Delhi? Though the states seem to have taken it as their fate to have schemes on state subjects like education, agriculture and so on tailored for them by the Centre, as if in distrust of the states’ capability to think...

Global business abhors uncertainty. The ministerial-level corruption in UPA-II has slowed FDI and FII inflows. The stock market, despite double-digit corporate profit and 8.6% GDP growth, reflects the anxiety of Indian and foreign investors. To take India's growth story forward in the 20th year of economic reforms, political reforms must catch up. Misgovernance won't do in a globalised, interconnected world. Two kinds of political corruption blight India: episodical and ongoing. Episodical...