Farm technologies are not reaching farmers on the ground, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh observed here on Monday and said “it represents the failure of the system.” He was speaking at the Golden Jubilee convocation of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) here. The annual farm growth rate was expected to be 3.5 per cent in the 12th Plan period ending this year, he said, but there was concern over the gap between...

Dr Abhijit Sen is Member, Planning Commission of India. He is a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge (currently on leave as Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University) and has also taught at the Universities of Sussex, Oxford and Cambridge. Besides serving various think tanks in the states and at the centre, Dr Sen has been a consultant with UNDP, ILO, FAO and various other multilateral...

-The Business Standard   A proposed move by the Centre to slash natural gas supplies to phosphorous and potash-based (P&K) fertiliser manufacturing units has seen a number of farmer bodies, agro-experts and Scientists raise a howl of protest. The move could seriously impact soil fertility, which in turn could hit food production in the country, they warned. Nutrients in soil are necessary to increase overall productivity of agri-commodities to help meet the country’s...

They operate from a cramped floor in a commercial building near Bhikaji Cama Place in Delhi, and work on a heavy roster of hearings day in and day out. However, the five posts of information commissioners in the Central Information Commission have drawn applications from all categories of people — from Scientists, lawyers and journalists to, most of all, retired or soon-to-be retired bureaucrats.   Despite the heavy workload and its low-profile...

Deteriorating weather conditions seem to have triggered serious concern among farmers with their rabi crop of wheat being highly prone to diseases such as yellow rust that strike during this period. Though no case of yellow rust affecting rabi crops has been detected in Nainital district, some cases of the disease affecting crops have come to light in parts of Udham Singh Nagar district, officials said. If yellow rust is detected, a...