-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...
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Battle lines sharpen over GM -Meena Menon
-The Hindu The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, by granting approval to GM trials even before the Supreme Court ruled in the matter, has shown an undue haste Union Minister of Environment , Forests and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar, was petitioned by farmers and the Swadeshi Jagran Manch to halt trials of transgenic crops approved by the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) on July 18 and there is some confusion if the...
More »Officials blame farmer suicides on poor rains -Zia Haq & Pradip Kumar Maitra
-The Hindustan Times Suicides by farmers in Telangana and pockets of Maharashtra since the start of a poor monsoon season are threatening to reach alarming levels, as authorities weigh options to handle a long-standing problem. In Telangana, over 100 farmers have committed suicide so far, according to some accounts, which officials were yet to verify. In Maharashtra, 72 suicides have been reported since June. "There have been some suicides. We are ascertaining the...
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 »Govt will ‘tread cautiously’ over GM crop trials
-The Hindustan Times Environment minister Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday said that the government would "tread cautiously" on allowing field trials of genetically modified crops after the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) issued a statement quoting the minister saying that the trials have been put on hold. "We would consider all aspects before taking a decision on whether the field trials of GM crops should be allowed or not," the minister told HT. The government's biotech regulator,...
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