-Hindustan Times Mumbai: For a state considered the sugar bowl of the country and home to generations of politically heavyweight co-operative doyens, this is a sign of changing times. The drought-prone Solapur district in western Maharashtra, which has the highest number of sugar factories in the state (33), has finally decided to put a stop to cultivation of the water-guzzling sugarcane crop, with its collector saying the area under cultivation for the...

-The Hindu Moratorium on Intellectual Property Complaints Switzerland and the U.S. have begun a campaign at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to not renew a moratorium on ‘non-violation complaints and situations’ for intellectual property rights that expires at the end of the year. Intellectual property laws are governed internationally by the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. The moratorium first came into being in 1995, when the WTO was born. And has survived...

-The Hindu Business Line Finance Minister meets bankers to set targets To promote very small businesses, the Centre aims to facilitate credit up to ₹1 lakh crore under the MUDRA scheme in the current fiscal. According to a senior government official, the credit facility issue was discussed at a meeting between the Finance Minister and bankers recently. It was proposed that for the current fiscal, the target under ‘Shishu’ category would be ₹40,000 crore,...

-The Hindu Two years after vociferously arguing for an expansion of the provisions of the National Food Security Act, the BJP in government is bleeding it with a thousand cuts, both fiscal and otherwise When Parliament passed the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in 2013, it had already become one of the most debated pieces of legislation in decades. Those for and against it had fought it out across yards of space...

-The Hindu Suicides decrease with increasing farm size and yield, but increase with the area under Bt Cotton’. The cultivation of Bt cotton, a genetically modified, insect-resistant cotton variety, is a risky affair for Indian farmers practising rain-fed agriculture, according to a latest study published by California-based agricultural scientists in the journal Environmental Sciences Europe. Annual suicide rates of farmers in rain-fed areas are directly related to increase in Bt cotton adoption, say...