More suggestions that biofuels are not an environmental free lunch ONCE upon a time, biofuels were thought of as a solution to fossil-fuel dependence. Now they are widely seen as a boondoggle to agribusiness that hurts the environment and cheats taxpayers. A report commissioned by the United Nations endorses neither extreme. It gives high marks to some crop-based fuels and lambasts others. Meanwhile, two papers published in Science, a leading...

The recession is a promising moment to expand NREGA with greater emphasis on building social capital in a big way.  Soon after assuming office, the first UPA government took an impressive step for the alleviation of rural poverty by launching the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It was, indeed, a wise move to insulate the programme from the vicissitudes of electoral politics by enacting the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act...

The procurement of rice for distribution under the proposed Right to Food scheme has renewed the fears of irreversible depletion of water table in India’s grain producing regions. It is feared that unless more scientific and progressive methods of rice cultivation are used, the otherwise welcome scheme would lead to more sowing of summer paddy leading to more injudicious water use and further soil degradation. Many rural NGOs and agricultural...

Farmers advised to revert to traditional practices in farming to make it sustainable in future ANANTAPUR: Experts at a workshop on climate change and sustainable agriculture have opined that the Green Revolution has done more harm than good to the agriculture sector in the country from a long term perspective. They suggested the farmers to return to traditional practices in farming in order to make the vocation sustainable in future....

The Prime Minister’s Independence Day address to the nation was particularly disappointing this year. The Prime Minister has said, yet again, that "the country needs another Green Revolution". But what’s distressing is that his government has not even formulated a draft strategy for such a revolution in the last five years, let alone launch it. Why? Largely because the agriculture minister has not shown the slightest interest in a "Second...