-The Hindu Business Line India’s largest public-funded Research institution, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), has not made its annual reports and account details public for the past five years, a major departure from a norm practised for decades. The CSIR has not submitted its annual reports to Parliament since 2013-14 even though some insiders claim the institution has prepared these reports and had its accounts audited every year. Please click...

-The Hindu Researchers from Institute for Social and Economic Change say price will stabilise only by March 2020 Bengaluru: The price of onion in the country spikes every two years and this is largely triggered by a series of factors, including drought, late arrival of monsoon, floods, crop failure, and supply disruptions, according to a recent study. The current sharp spike in onion price is expected to continue till at least March...

-Livemint.com Let’s not discredit the findings of statistical surveys that are conducted among real respondents The uncomfortable truth that emerged from the leaked report of the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) is that rural poverty increased substantially between 2011-12 and 2017-18 for the first time in five decades. That this happened during a period of claimed high growth should have led to more Research on what went wrong. Instead, there have been attempts...

-The Hindu Business Line The National Seed Association of India (NSAI), which represents top seed companies in the country, on Wednesday suggested some changes in the proposed Seed Bill 2019, including a more scientific definition of transgenic variety, enhanced farmer rights on seeds and enlisting the services of private firms for evaluating new varieties before seed registration. In letters written to Indian Council of Agricultural Research - Director General (ICAR) Trilochan Mahapatra...

-Financial Express A study by ICRIER researchers Ashok Gulati and Pritha Banerjee shows how problematic the fertiliser policy is—for farmers, industry, the environment and the government. India’s experience with fertilisers, in the later part of the Green Revolution, prompted it to adopt a policy of subsidising fertilisers. In 1977, the country had a total NPK (nitrogenous, phosphatic and potassic) fertiliser consumption of 4.3 million metric tonnes (mmt) and per hectare usage...