-TheWire.in * The proposed Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill 2021 encourages a conducive environment for investments and to simplify the patent application process. * Farmers in India have historically been against any kind of IP rights – whether patents or plant variety protection over seed and planting materials. * In a confused mix of laws, the government also grants IP rights to BMCs for farmers’ varieties – formed under the Biological Diversity Act –...

-MoneyControl.com Methodologies can differ to a limited extent but a 10 percent margin of difference is difficult to explain, as a war of words breaks out in India and overseas With COVID-19 thought to be receding into the background, a fresh controversy around it has surfaced, this time from mortality figures provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and backed by similar claims from renowned global medical journals like The Lancet and...

-Financial Express Crop loss, lower procurement to deplete FCI stocks; local supplies may suffice for PDS, free-ration schemes At Punjab’s Rajpura mandi, private traders are busy buying the wheat crop brought in by farmers at marginally above the minimum support price (MSP). Traders have been super-active in the mandi, one of the largest centres of wheat trade in the country, and their daily purchases often exceed the official procurement by the state-run...

-Centre for Science and Environment It is becoming clearer by the day that chemical fertilizers are not a sustainable solution to the problem of depletion of soil nutrients as a result of agriculture, particularly crop production. Biofertilizers and organic fertilizers not only provide nutrients to crops, they also help in restoring soil health and ecological balance. As we (re)discover the power and potential of biofertilizers and organic fertilizers, we need to...

-IdeasForIndia.in The Mandal Commission and Sachar Committee reports, among others, have indicated the existence of caste inequalities within the four major caste groups. However, data on this subject remain limited. Using data from a novel 2014-2015 survey conducted in Uttar Pradesh, this article shows that within-group inequalities among upper castes are significantly less, relative to the within-group inequalities observed among both Hindu and Muslim OBCs and Dalits. Broadly, four social groups –...