A seminar titled Food Security and Sustainability in India, organized at Amritsar between 7 and 8 November by the GAD Institute of Development Studies, a NGO, at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, brought together government officials, scientists, academicians and NGOs so as to generate discussions and debates surrounding climate change and global warming and their impact on agriculture. The Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change is going to take place between...

If there is one sector that is visibly the intersection of backroom politics, crony capitalism and serious threats to India’s internal security, it is mining. The business of resource extraction has always had its own peculiar economic logic: modern, yet dependent on the land; high-tech, yet somehow, indefinably, with feudal overtones. These anomalies have traditionally been recognised by economists, who categorise mining as the only “industrial” component of the primary,...

Seven rounds of trade talks between the EU and India have been concluded without any negotiating texts or positions of either party being made public.  The widespread optimism about the possible signing of the India-European Union (EU) Free Trade Agreement (FTA) sometime in 2010 fails to take into account the many thorny issues that remain to be resolved. Not the least of them are the tariff negotiations on goods and...

Calcutta, Oct 20: The CPM central committee appears to have underestimated the decline in the party’s vote in Bengal in the Lok Sabha polls last May. The final poll data compiled by the National Election Study (NES) now shows that the decline in the party’s — and the Left Front’s — vote was sharper than what had been calculated earlier. Also, the erosion was spread across all social groups, including...

A new international report slams the Indian government for not doing enough to end hunger. It says hunger exists in India because of a lack of purchasing capacity of the poor rather due to insufficiency of food production. Titled “Who’s Really Fighting Hunger”?, (see the link below) the Action Aid report which was released on 16 October, 2009 reveals that in India 30 million people have been added to the...