Maharashtra's Wineyard

Education, sports and addictive beverages seem a good business to be in. Some 'politicians' are benefiting from all of them. Sharad Power...err Pawar - the Agriculture and Food Minister, BCCI president runs a few high end private technical colleges.

Recently, he has found new ways to make money - subsidising rich wine farmers (including himself) in western Maharashtra while lowering import duty on cotton which is already responsible for nearly 1000 farmer suicides in eastern Maharashtra.

experts contend that even the substantial incentives offered to the wine industry are swallowed up by a handful of big wineries. Pawar—he even has a grape variety, Sharad Seedless, named after him—must explain why the future of a few large wineries is more important than the livelihood of 20 lakh cotton cultivators. Perhaps the state administration will wake up only when it's election time. In Maharashtra, which went to the polls last year, that's four long years away.

But then, to win last elections, they had offered free electricity to all farmers including poor farmers who dont even have electrical connections and infrastructure to make use of the scheme.