Rural India has been denied access to globalisation, penalising farmers and farm labour. For the farmer, the government's policy is best described as Dhritarashtra's embrace. After the Mahabharata war was over, the old king met his nephews, the victorious Pandavas, and embraced them, one by one, in a gesture of forgiving and affection. When, Bhima's turn came, the loving embrace was so tight that it crushed a metal dummy of the second...

-Reuters   PERLE: As a shiny red harvester bounces across the black earth into the first row of sugar cane, excited schoolchildren run after it and several dozen men stand gaping in the wake of its swift progress. It's the first time that Perle, a village on the banks of the Krishna river in Maharashtra state, has seen a machine used for cutting the tough cane. "This machine will harvest my entire field today,"...

Non-urea fertilizer prices were freed in April 2010, but GSFCL, DFPCL, RCF still got gas at regulated prices The fertilizer ministry is considering asking three non-urea fertilizer makers to return part of the gains they have made since April 2010 on account of gas supplied to them at regulated prices while they were allowed to sell their products at market prices. Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers Ltd (RCF), Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals...

-The Business Standard The transition to direct fertiliser subsidy will not be easy The road map for direct transfer of fertiliser subsidy to farmers that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee outlined in the Budget has come under a cloud even before it is rolled out. Most in the fertiliser sector – including, notably, the fertiliser ministry and fertiliser dealers – are wary of trying it out, for fear that it might create more...

UPA-II's plans to replace the existing fertiliser subsidy regime with direct cash transfers to farmers will be delayed as the fertiliser ministry is likely to scrap an intermediate phase where the subsidy was to be rerouted from companies to retailers this summer. This puts paid to the fertilizer industry's expectation that very soon it would be out of the subsidy mechanism which locks up precious working capital. "We are rethinking the original...