This is called moron management. Instead of debating nuclear safety, India’s Prime Minister is trotting out conspiracies AS SPIN doctors go, the UPA and its media advisers have proved to be pretty good. But as the elected government of the world’s largest democracy, their attitude towards public debate on issues of importance such as nuclear or GMO safety comes across as churlish, vengeful and authoritarian. People who believe that the anti-nuclear struggle...

-The Telegraph Dispur today said the state’s economy was “performing well” when the country’s overall growth rate was projected to be affected by the economic meltdown in Europe. The principal secretary of the state finance department, Himangshu Sekhar Das, said Assam had not borrowed any money from the market in the current fiscal (2011-12) and its tax collection had recorded an increase of 33 per cent, most of which had come from...

Bt cotton has doubled the seed industry and boosted the fortunes of seed firms. But yields still need to improve In the last 10 years, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton and its impact on farmers has perhaps been the most talked about topic in Indian agriculture since the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s. Not only has farmers’ income from growing Bt cotton risen by almost 67 per cent in the...

-The Times of India   Can Jairam Ramesh become the next president of the World Bank? Unlikely, but in the steady drumbeat of the demand that the next World Bank president must come from the developing world, the rural development minister’s name is being heard alongside several other competent names from the wrong side of the poverty divide.    An independent website, worldbankpresident.org, which is running a poll on who should be the next...

Professor Arjun Appadurai is a Mumbaikar at heart; coming to the city is an annual pilgrimage for this internationa­lly renowned cultural theorist and anthropologist. Appadurai, 62, who studied in Mumbai’s Elphinstone College, is currently Goddard Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He has been consultant and advisor to a wide range of public and private foundations such as The Smithsonian. In his seminal work Disjuncture and...