Veteran agricultural scientist and alumnus of Harvard and Berkeley Universities, Dr Peter Kenmore was in Mumbai for NABARD’s 30th anniversary lecture on ‘Future of Global Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunities for India.’ This United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization India representative spoke to Yogesh Pawar on the current scenario in agriculture. Some excerpts: There’s a lot of churn over GM technology in India. At a time when the country is grappling with...

Prolonged captivity of hostages & perceived helplessness of government have adverse impact on psyche of society Maoists may be patting themselves on their back for forcing the Chhattisgarh and Odisha governments to give into their demands in exchange for those abducted by them, but kidnap as a tool of revolutionary warfare could prove to be counter-productive to them. The prolonged captivity of hostages and the perceived helplessness of the government, which fears...

-The Times of India The CBI must prosecute the Pathribal case The Supreme Court's ruling in the Pathribal case, giving military autho-rities eight weeks to court martial the army officials allegedly responsible for the extrajudicial killings of five Kashmiri civilians 12 years ago, is unfortunate. It would be all too easy for the matter to be quietly swept under the carpet if left in the hands of the military authorities, as has...

The Supreme Court has taken steps to lay down a code for media reporting. This attempt at prior restraint on the media is a dangerous move with precedent from authoritarian polities. In a context where the judiciary has been lax in defending the media from attacks which seek to curb its freedom, such unilateral moves will not remedy bad reporting but rather make conditions worse for the media to play...

This month a group of Dalit (or Untouchables, as they were formerly labelled) students organised a Beef Festival in Osmania University of Hyderabad. It was the festival to assert their culinary rights in public and make a political statement of dietary habits of Dalits and Muslims – by cooking and eating beef Biryani on campus. About 2000 students participated and although it started out well, the festival was disrupted and students...