The new draft National Water Policy (NWP) circulated by the Ministry of Water Resources to water experts suggests that the government is poised to withdraw from its responsibilities of water service delivery, and that multinational corporations and financial institutions might have too big a say in water allocation and policy. At first glance, it appears as if the policy takes a holistic approach to water resources management, with a clear recognition...

In a major boost to Gujarat's big farmers, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of the Government of India has approved commercial distribution of a new variety of Bt Cotton seed, developed jointly by US multinational Monsanto, Gujarat Seed Supply Corporation (GSSC) and Navsari Agricultural University. The new seed is expected to raise cotton Productivity by up to 30 per cent as against the current Bt Cotton yield of 11...

The huge expenditure on the food bill, with the attendant leakages, could well make fiscal recovery impossible In the first part of this article, we have estimated the actual cost of implementing the food security bill in its current form. In this part, we now examine the fiscal sustainability of the same. The current state of the revenue and expenditure trends of the Central government (refer table) show that while revenue...

-Reuters   Global warming will get worse as agricultural methods accelerate the rate of soil erosion, which depletes the amount of carbon the soil is able to store, a United Nations' Environment Programme report said on Monday. Soil contains huge quantities of carbon in the form of organic matter. which provides nutrients for plant growth and improves soil fertility and water movement. The top metre of soil alone stores around 2,200 billion tonnes of...

-Live Mint   Never in the history of India has a welfare programme of such scale been launched before. As the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) enters its seventh year, its statistics are staggering. In 2011-12, 37.8 million households were provided employment and 1,208 million persondays of work were generated. In its scale and ambition, the programme is pharaonic. If the programme succeeds in its mission—and that is still a...