-Himal South Asian   Agroecology as an alternative to India's failed agrarian system. Last September, inflation, as indicated by the wholesale price index, rose to a seven-month high of 6.46 percent. Food inflation was at 18.4 percent, and was led by skyrocketing onion prices, which increased by a whopping 323 percent. While the Union Minister for Agriculture, Sharad Pawar, ascribed the phenomenon to nothing more than a seasonal shortage, practices such as...

-The Hindu   No one can attack India's well-founded Intellectual Property regime as being weak merely because a drug that is claimed to be an invention fails the test of law India and its intellectual property (IP) laws have been the subject of sharp criticism recently. Now, there is talk of the government invoking emergency provisions with regard to Dasatinib, a cancer drug. The decibel level may go up several notches. Let us look...

-Deccan Herald   Chennai: Once the source of her livelihood, the farmland 51-year-old Vellamal owns in Kallupatti village near Tamil Nadu's Karur district has gone completely dry in the last one year due to monsoon failure. The rapidly depleting groundwater forced her to abandon agriculture and Vellamal, left high and dry, signed up to Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). Now, the scheme feeds her entire family. As Deccan Herald toured...

-The Business Standard   There is nothing called junk food. The problem with obesity lies with children who do not exercise enough. What is needed is for them to run and jump, and to do this they need to consume high-calorie food. So, food high in salt, sugar and fat is good for them." This is what was argued vehemently and rudely by representatives of the food industry in the committee set...

-The Guardian Rice conservationist Debal Deb grapples with 'mindless Indian elite' to reintroduce genetically diverse, drought-tolerant varieties   Fifty years ago, every Indian village would probably have grown a dozen or more rice varieties that grew nowhere else. Passed down from generation to generation and family to family, there would have been a local variety for every soil and taste - rice that would grow well in droughts or deep floods, which had...