Rural India has been denied access to globalisation, penalising farmers and farm labour. For the farmer, the government's policy is best described as Dhritarashtra's embrace. After the Mahabharata war was over, the old king met his nephews, the victorious Pandavas, and embraced them, one by one, in a gesture of forgiving and affection. When, Bhima's turn came, the loving embrace was so tight that it crushed a metal dummy of the second...

A new report underlines the benefits of organic farming in the age of climate change While addressing a conference on the National Water Week this week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh underlined the brewing water crisis. It could as well have been called the ‘National Water Weak’ — for this precious commodity for life is struggling to survive. The maximum blame for wastage of water is often put at the doors of...

The time has come for optimal pricing of water and power to prevent an unlimited pumping of groundwater and aid better coordination amongst competing demands for the scarce resource, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here on Tuesday. Dr. Singh's observations come at a time when there is a debate on the pricing of water and privatisation of services in the sector. The Ministry of Water Resources is working on a reforms-oriented...

-Express News Service Terming the existing institutional and legal structures of water management in the country as “inadequate”, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday advocated for “urgent” reforms and batted for an “overarching national legal framework” for the governance of the sector.   Inaugurating India Water Week, which will be celebrated in April every year from now, Singh said: “One of the problems in achieving better management is that the current institutional and...

-The Economic Times   Decontrol of urea is likely to affect agricultural production adversely for several reasons. First, it will immediately push up prices of all nitrogenous fertilisers and reduce their usage, thereby lowering crop yields.  Second, it may also lead to increase in the prices of DAP and other mixed fertilisers due to shift in demand in their favour. Urea decontrol may not result in more balanced use of N, P and...