Much of the daylight robbery in the name of Commonwealth Games has been justified in the name of "National Prestige" and "World class aspirations. Whether all these surreptitious measures will eventually deliver the games is an open question? The Commonwealth is a 'friendly' association of those 72 colonies which were once part of the British Empire and rose to free nationhood - some through protracted struggle and others through negotiation. In...
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Draft food security bill may irk Sonia, states, SC by Nitin Sethi
The government has readied the draft of its promised Food Security Act but the bare provisions appear to fall short of the pledge on many counts. It could not only trigger a face-off with the states but also cause heartburn to the Supreme Court and displease Congress chief Sonia Gandhi who had prepared a draft and sent it to the Prime Minister's Office last June. The Bill is a result...
More »A Law Unto Itself by Lola Nayar, Chandrani Banerjee
* Main aim is to create asingle-window clearing-house for GM foods/crops * Planned regulatory authority to have overarching powers over state governments, existing laws * No room for farmers or civil society in approval process * Penal action for raising objection without scientific evidence * No independent risk assessment of data submitted to the authority * No provision for revoking approvals, inadequate liability clause * No informed choice for consumers...
More »UNICEF supports children in eastern India against early marriage
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is supporting a new anti-child marriage movement in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, where nearly half of all girls become child brides and one-third become teenage mothers even though the legal marriage age is 18. “We need to have a zero-tolerance policy towards child marriage, so that every child, boy and girl, has the opportunity to live their childhood and gain an...
More »The Gene Gun At Your Head by Shoma Chaudhury
IMAGINE THE lowly brinjal you have always known turning into a sci-fi gizmo — with an uncharted potency for good and evil. Imagine a food turned into a pesticide — and you will have a measure of the essential uncertainty around Bt brinjal. When Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh announced his indefinite moratorium on Bt brinjal on February 9, he halted a juggernaut that could have swept India to a point...
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