-The Hindu The fact that food companies prosper but farmers commit suicide shows that profits are in the market, not the farm. It is time to replicate the Amul story many times over In the ongoing debates on the new land acquisition bill, the potential of agribusiness to address agrarian distress has not been explored. There are several domestic agriculture companies, both listed and private, that are doing extremely well amidst an...

-The Hindu The demand for a reverse osmosis water filter device has been growing in my household. ‘Has our existing water filter stopped being friendly?’ has been my consistent query. ‘It is time we got a new one’ has been the standard response. Considered to be one of that generation to whom the ‘utility’ of a product carries a lot of meaning, listing the virtues of new technology has often been...

-Livemint.com Effective policy changes at the state-level are needed as this is where the problem and its solutions lie—and not in a National Agricultural Market There have been many attempts at alleviating the pain of the farmer in India, be it natural calamities or market risks, but nothing seems to work, and the problems of farmer distress and indebtedness continue to grow. For some time now, there has been a focus...

-Economic and Political Weekly A number of state agencies and non-governmental organisations have come forward to facilitate farmers/breeders to register their crop varieties and obtain plant variety certifi cates. But can these agencies bring forth a change in the mindset of the small farmers and seed savers' groups who view the current intellectual property regime with scepticism and continue to keep away from it? Shalini Bhutani (shalinibhutani@hotmail.com) is a legal researcher and...

-The Tribune The Supreme Court may take time to decide upon existence or non-existence of the “right to privacy”. The Aadhaar project should not be scrapped.It should be implemented with safeguards to prevent the misuse of biometric data. The tussle over right to privacy is is still on in the Supreme Court of India. While the government has already completed 75 per cent of its work, debate on the existence of one...