Affluent farmers are exploiting MGNREGS, the central govt’s flagship programme, sending their workers to draw wages whenever they are not required on their farms THE GOVERNMENT seems to be in a fix with its flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) being widely misused even as the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) decides to conduct its own independent audit of the scheme along with National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)...

Developing countries will now have to battle IP issues related to new agricultural technologies at WIPO instead of WTO The World Intellectual Property Organization has announced clearly that it intends to play a role—and considering the clout WIPO enjoys it implies a significant part—in promoting intellectual property (IP) in agriculture to enhance productivity. The UN body stepped into this touchy arena with a seminar at its Geneva headquarters that has gone...

The Noida-Greater Noida imbroglio will be instructive for the draft land acquisition bill In The Works...     * Government to acquire land, “public purpose” to be redefined     * Land acquisition only after getting written consent of 80 per cent of landowners     * Monitoring authority to be set up at the Centre and states to ensure compliance     * Payment component split into part-cash-down and remaining in annuity for 33 years     * Post...

As it is drafted, the Bill actually deprives people, and the State governments, of existing rights on multiple counts. The Food Security Bill finalised by a Group of Ministers should not be accepted by Parliament in its present form. The overriding negative features of the proposed legislation far outweigh its positive initiatives. The framework itself is questionable since the Central government usurps all powers to decide the numbers, criteria and schemes...

On the night of June 21,  around 10 p.m., the police of West Bengal’s Hooghly district descended on Tata Motors’ half-built Singur plant and threw out the private guards there. In about half an hour, the new government in West Bengal, under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee, took over the 997 acres that had proved to be the Waterloo of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and its allies.   Earlier,...