-India Today "The butterflies will show you the way to the farm." Farmer Sunil Gupta is not talking of mythical butterflies that will appear to guide me to the organic farm I am trying to locate amidst swathes of farmland, some lush with the standing paddy, some damaged in parts from last week's strong winds, others dotted with vegetable patches or freshly ploughed for the next crop. Can one tell an organic...

-The Indian Express New Delhi: You might not know it, but the next time you park your diesel vehicle at the shopping mall and answer that ringing phone, you would have done your bit to release a small portion of poison into Delhi's air. Not once, but thrice. From the exhaust fumes of your car to the generator sets that keep the mall alive, and the mobile tower active. So much so,...

-The Hindu What makes public policy exciting and potentially inventive is the contested nature of the public sphere. It is anchored in a diversity of perspectives which challenges the dominance of one subject. India is a country full of paradoxes. The elite in the country are forward-looking; they emphasise the need for reskilling but they conduct all this with backward-looking institutions. An acute observer once said: "we want to be [a] knowledge...

-Frontline Outcomes of the patterns of growth induced by neoliberal economic reforms have increased the disproportionality between agricultural and non-agricultural growth, and with costs rising and prices not keeping pace, agriculture is becoming increasingly unviable. FARMERS across northern and central India-in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and elsewhere-are distressed. Unseasonal rains have damaged their standing crop and help from the government has been meagre and slow in coming. This, however, is...

-Frontline   The BJP-led NDA government has, in the two Budgets it has presented so far, revealed itself to be very different from the pro-farmer image that its leading election campaigner and now Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, projected. THE Bharatiya Janata Party's manifesto for the 2014 Lok Sabha election states: "Agriculture is the engine of India's economic growth and the largest employer, and BJP commits highest priority to agriculture growth, increases in...