-Livemint.com All our solutions in agriculture, besides management issues, are going to come from science and technology, says Deepak Pental, innovator of GM mustard Last week, the environment ministry’s regulator, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), cleared the commercial release of genetically modified (GM) mustard, leaving it to the government to take a final call. If approved, it will be India’s first food crop developed using transgenic technology, 15 years after Bt...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan today urged environment minister Anil Dave to reject a regulatory panel's recommendation to release genetically modified mustard for commercial cultivation, questioning the regulatory process and claims about the plant's superiority. In a letter to Dave, Bhushan cited a Supreme Court hearing on GM crops and described India's regulatory mechanisms for such crops as "farcical". He asked Dave to "withhold" his approval to the...

-The Hindu Online media companies don’t take responsibility for their content, he says Sam Pitroda, regarded as the father of India’s telecom revolution, says that he is deeply concerned with the way social media is being misused globally to propagate lies, hatred and false ideas. In an interview, Mr. Pitroda says that in India also, social media has not been used effectively and technology is not meant to be misapplied. He says...

-TelanganaToday.news Promotion of small farmer economy will help escape the six-decade-old crisis and boost the sector in State Agriculture in Telangana, particularly being carried out by small and marginal farmers, is poised for a rapid transition in the coming years. More so, after the historical announcement of a major policy on promotion of small farmer economy by Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao at the recently-held plenary. The first full-scale Budget of 2015-16 addressed...

-PRS Legislative Research The key findings of the report entitled: State of Agriculture in India by Tanvi Deshpande (March, 2017) are as follows: * The agriculture sector employs nearly half of the workforce in the country.  However, it contributes to 17.5% of the GDP (at current prices in 2015-16). * Over the past few decades, the manufacturing and services sectors have increasingly contributed to the growth of the economy, while the agriculture sector’s...