As agriculture universities transform local varieties into genetically modified Bt brinjal, questions of ownership arise. Indians call it the brinjal. Other countries know it as the eggplant or aubergine. It is widely used the world over and every cuisine from the Chinese to the African has an encyclopaedia of recipes that establishes its popularity as a vegetable of daily use. And no vegetable has hogged the headlines as much as the...

The Supreme Court today asked the central government to explain why lotteries shouldn’t be banned to save the poor from frittering away their meagre earnings in the hope of hitting the jackpot. The notice came a little over a week after another bench of the court asked Bengal to restrict draws of a lottery to once a week as mandated under a central law instead of one every five minutes. “Why should...

Worthies such as Ratan Tata who have been lobbying the government to go easy on Union Carbide Corporation (http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/5_27.pdf) would do well to read Carbide’s useful FAQs on the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy, which claimed over 10,000 lives. Worse, over 5 lakh humans, including those born after the disaster, are still suffering the consequences of the gas leak. Even now, Carbide refuses to accept any kind of...

Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan’s recent request to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to protect the judiciary from increasingly ‘‘intrusive’’ queries appears to have triggered an exercise to look for options to effect changes in the RTI Act. Following the CJI’s impassioned letter, which said questions asked by chronic litigants about the judiciary could erode its independence, the government has started looking into possible changes in the RTI Act,...

In a year of sparse rains and spiralling food prices, with hundreds of districts being officially declared as drought-hit, a rally by activists in the capital demands a Food Entitlements Act.  Perhaps the most vocal demands at the rally were those aimed at a complete revamp of the Public Distribution System (PDS), starting with universal — instead of targeted — coverage. Over 5,000 grassroots activists, agricultural workers, farmers, lawyers, doctors and...