-The Indian Express At current rates of depletion, Punjab’s entire subsurface water resource could be exhausted in a little over two decades. Jalandhar: As the discussion around Punjab’s massive groundwater crisis becomes more urgent, there is an increasingly stronger accent on diversification of crops, and a move away from water-guzzling paddy. At a meeting over the weekend, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, decided to strengthen maize — the most Important alternative to...
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The Seed Bill needs to be tweaked to serve the interests of all stakeholders better -Ram Kaundinya
-The Hindu Business Line The proposals relating to registration of seed varieties and powers granted to the government to fix prices in some situations need a relook Seed is the primary input of a productive agriculture set-up. No one can deny the fact that the seed industry has been at the centre of the significant advances made in agriculture in the last four decades and will continue to do in the years...
More »The opacity around electoral bonds -Trilochan Sastry
-The Hindu If big money entirely funds elections in a secretive way, democracy as we know it will not exist The recent disclosures that the Election Commission (EC) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had expressed reservations about the Electoral Bonds scheme highlight the Importance of this issue. In 2017, the then RBI Governor wrote to the then Finance Minister that “allowing any entity other than the central bank to issue...
More »Too much too often: Antibiotics in Indian crops can make them ineffective -Bhavya Khullar, Rajeshwari Sinha & Amit Khurana
-Down to Earth Antibiotics are indiscriminately used on food crops in several parts of the country, adding to the burden of antibiotic resistance Dharampal Singh just cannot stop admiring the cauliflowers glistening with beads of dew on his farm near the Yamuna banks in Delhi. Next to the plot, rows of radishes, spinach, fenugreek and bottle gourds lie shining in the morning sun. “These untainted vegetables fetch me a premium in the...
More »The threat to the idea of a public university -Avijit Pathak
-The Hindu Education is a right, not a privilege reserved for the select elite Even though Jawaharlal Nehru University, where I teach, is in turmoil because of an incompetent administration incapable of communicating with the students and teachers, the larger crisis confronting the idea of a public university needs to be understood. From Jamia Millia Islamia to Jadavpur University, from Visva-Bharati University to Aligarh Muslim University, and from the University of Hyderabad...
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