It would be the saddest day of our lives if the Centre approves the commercial cultivation of Bt brinjal. This would be an excuse for the government to allow genetically-modified food crops in India, which are facing stiff opposition in other parts of the world. How can the government think of allowing genetically-modified crops in the country when there is no scientific evidence to prove that they are safe for...

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...

Faced with rising world hunger and “unacceptable” poverty, members of the Food and Agriculture Organisation Committee on World Food Security (CFS) have agreed on a wide-ranging reform, the FAO announced on Tuesday. The reform aims at making the CFS an “inclusive” international and intergovernmental platform dealing with food security and nutrition, and its being a central component in the evolving global partnership for agriculture, food security and nutrition. In addition...

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 18: Members of tribal communities living in the hills and forests of Malkangiri in Orissa are a jubilant lot these days, as they have finally become owners of land that they and their ancestors have been living on for years now. Cultivation being the main source of livelihood for them, possession of these title certificates for forestland (pattas) where they have been residing meant much to the Bondas, Koyas...

The government will hand over the running of the rural job scheme to a nation-wide network of NGOs, sidelining the panchayats and gram sabhas that managed the programme till now. The official explanation is the “failure of the local-level political system” (sarpanches) in running the UPA’s flagship social programme that is mired in allegations of corruption and inefficiency. Many NGOs had been monitoring the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme but now they...