Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar recently alleged that Monsanto, the Union environment ministry’s genetic engineering approval committee (GEAC) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) had colluded to start trials of genetically modified maize in Bihar before clearance from the environment ministry and the state government. The charge is significant: Nitish says ICAR’s experimental farms in Bihar did not maintain the stipulated “isolation distance” from normal farmland, meant to...

Meeting of Secretaries convened for 8 March; data on 1,000 officers already in Union Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar is calling a meeting of union secretaries here on 8 March to convey to them a government decision making it mandatory for bureaucrats to put details of the moveable and immoveable property they own on a government website. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been pushing for this as part of a promised clean-up...

A proposed government move to regulate content on blogs has ignited a firestorm of protest from the blogging community which is accusing the government of restricting free speech and acting like the guardians of a police state. At the heart of the issue is the Indian IT Act which was amended in 2008 to incorporate the much-needed changes to clarify the legal position of intermediaries or those who provide web-hosting...

Draft rules proposed by the Indian government for intermediaries such as telecommunications companies, Internet service providers and blogging sites could in effect aid censorship, according to experts. Under the draft rules, intermediaries will have to notify users of their services not to use, display, upload, publish, share or store a variety of content, for which the definition is very vague, and liable to misuse. Content that is prohibited under these guidelines ranges...

This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order...