-The Business Standard Recent reports of the acquisition of a foreign rock phosphate mine by an Indian fertiliser manufacturer through a joint venture with a Japanese firm — in order to secure the raw material supply to its domestic phosphatic plant — should be viewed as part of a trend that needs to be sustained. India is critically dependent on fertiliser imports, since the availability of raw material for indigenous production...

While some may view the food security Bill as the instrument of combating poverty, this distinction belongs to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the flagship anti-poverty programme of the United Progressive Alliance government. The proponents of the food security Bill at the National Advisory Council have promoted it as the instrument of fighting widespread and rising hunger, instead. But what is the empirical basis of the claims of widespread and...

It is clearly the absence of political will rather than a paucity of ideas that is responsible for the country's agrarian crisis. EXACTLY seven years ago this month, the Commission on Farmers' Welfare, appointed by the government of Andhra Pradesh, submitted its report to the then Chief Minister, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. His Congress government assumed office earlier that year replacing the Telegu Desam Party regime led by N. Chandrababu Naidu, which...

-The Hindu Business Line   The Millet Network of India (MINI), a group of associations that is promoting consumption of millets, has expressed concern about non-inclusion of local procurement provision in the latest version of the National Food Security Bill. In a letter addressed to Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh and Ms Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson of United Progressive Alliance, MINI has demanded that this clause should be included again in the draft bill....

India’s per capita availability of water, on the basis of the 2011 population census, has fallen below the global threshold, signalling that the country will have to address conservation needs more seriously amid a growing population and an expanding economy. India’s per capita availability has been pegged at 1,545 cubic metre a year, including non-personal consumption, such as irrigation, according to an estimate of the water resources ministry — notches below...