-Livemint.com A simple but powerful case can be made that here is a comprehensive census which shows that the Indian farmer is entrenched in deep poverty The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman thinks about the next generation, said 19th century American author James Freeman Clarke. Reactions to the recently released Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) only reaffirms this. Earlier...

-Livemint.com US declares special and differential treatment a ‘threshold’ issue, implying that all developing countries will not be treated on par with regard to farm and fisheries subsidy programmes Geneva: Millions of poor farmers and fishermen in India could lose the benefits of special programmes offered by the government on account of a sustained assault on farm and fisheries subsidies by the US. Washington has declared special and differential treatment (S&DT) a...

-Down to Earth Apex trade regulator finds nothing amiss in India's intellectual property laws after exhaustive review India's intellectual property rights (IPR) regime, under constant attack from the US and multinational companies (MNCs) over the past few years, has been given a clean bill of health by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). At a two-day trade policy review conducted by the apex organisation in early June, there was no criticism of a...

-Business Standard Unaware of govt's proposals, unions tell labour minister Reacting to the Union government’s move to give industries flexibility in hiring contract workers, trade unions on Tuesday charged the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government with violating consultation norms. “This is gross violation of the basic norm of tripartism and the Citu (Centre of Indian Trade Unions) hereby lodges its protest against such violation,” Tapan Sen, general secretary of Citu, said in a...

-The Hindu Business Line A short delay does not impact sowing as there is a sufficient window The onset of monsoon over Kerala has been less than reassuring. Not only is it late by five days compared with the normal date of June 1, but it has also failed to arrive in the eight-day window set around the median of May 30. The conspicuous lack of flourish has led many to doubt...