-The Times of India NEW DELHI: India's domestic compulsions and the danger of breaching the subsidy cap for wheat and rice forced the government to thwart attempts by other World Trade Organization members to push through a new set of customs rules without addressing its concerns. The subsidy data, due to be released by the government over the next few weeks, will reveal that the subsidy on rice was over 9% of...
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Union Budget and the 'Digital Divide': Old Wine in New Bottle -Vipul Mudgal
-Economic and Political Weekly The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan should have been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is not to be in this mid-year budget. Vipul Mudgal (vipulmudgal@gmail.com) heads the Inclusive Media for Change project at the Centre...
More »Not just 2013, in 2008 too: Chhattisgarh’s fake ration cards given as election sop -Ashutosh Bhardwaj
-The Indian Express The Congress has now demanded a CBI inquiry into all ration cards made in Chhattisgarh in the past six-seven years. The BPL ration cards which were made in large numbers in Chhattisgarh before the 2013 assembly elections, as reported by The Indian Express on Friday, was an exact repetition of the developments ahead of the 2008 polls. If it was the Food Security Act in the 2013 elections, in...
More »Not just Centre, states don’t want GM crops either -Sandip Das
-The Financial Express The Narendra Modi government's decision to disallow field trials of 15 varieties of genetically modified (GM) crops came on top of several state governments virtually thwarting such trials of 45 GM crop varieties approved by the regulator during the previous UPA regime. The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) gave approval for 45 GM crop trials ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. However, states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha,...
More »Say yes to trials
-The Indian Express Because the GM question demands evidence-based policymaking, not corporate shills or NGO prejudices. Two RSS-affiliated groups, the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch and the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, seem to have successfully petitioned the environment minister to hold off field trials of genetically modified crops. Only a week ago, the statutory body for these decisions, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), had allowed farm trials of rice, mustard, cotton, chickpea and...
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