-The Hindu Business Line India’s Protection of Plant Varieties Act spells out rights of farmers vis-a-vis breeders, which resulted in a pushback for PepsiCo The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act (PPVFRA), which introduced intellectual property protection in Indian agriculture, faced its biggest test in its implementation phase of nearly a decade and a half, when PepsiCo India initiated legal proceedings against four farmers in Gujarat for “illegally” growing...

-Hindustan Times To understand the extent of the damage, the Haryana agriculture department is getting the state’s brinjal crop tested to determine whether it is GM-free at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), which will share the test results with the Haryana government next week. Farmers in Haryana and experts fear widespread contamination of genetically modified (GM) brinjal or eggplant in the state with the farmer accused of cultivating Bt...

-The Hindu Business Line Kochi (Kerala): The two-day conference on ‘Models for Agricultural Development: Experiences of Farmer Producer Companies’, has called for sustained efforts to strengthen, streamline, support and coordinate Farmer Producer Organisations. The conference, jointly organised by the Department of Agricultural Economics, Kerala Agriculture University and Indian Society of Agricultural Economics (ISAE), mooted a national level consortium to help the FPCs realise their goals and lead the efforts to enhance farmers’...

-The Hindu Why the recent undermining of the credibility of India’s statistical output is especially regrettable Over the past two months, Indian national statistics and the organisations that administer them have faced a volley of criticism. In January, two independent members of the National Statistical Commission resigned in protest, over alleged suppression of economic data by the government. More recently, amidst growing scepticism regarding India’s official statistics, more than a hundred scholars...

-The Hindu Financial details of 153 sitting MPs analysed by ADR-National Election Watch The average financial assets of 153 re-elected Lok Sabha MPs grew by 142%, from ?5.5 crore in 2009 to ?13.32 crore in 2014, according to an analysis by National Election Watch and the Association for Democratic Reforms. E. T. Mohammed Basheer of the IUML declared the highest jump of 2,018% (an almost 22-fold surge), followed by the TMC’s Sisir...