Bt cotton has doubled the seed industry and boosted the fortunes of seed firms. But yields still need to improve In the last 10 years, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton and its impact on farmers has perhaps been the most talked about topic in Indian agriculture since the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s. Not only has farmers’ income from growing Bt cotton risen by almost 67 per cent in the...
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Diluting a law by TK Rajalakshmi
The Law Commission recommends making Section 498A, IPC, compoundable, and women's groups say that would affect women's interests. A REPORT of the Law Commission of India on “Compounding of (IPC) Offences” suggesting that Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, which prescribes punishment for a husband or his relatives for subjecting a woman to cruelty, be made compoundable with the permission of the court, is fraught with several implications. The report...
More »No Bundle Packs Here by Anuradha Raman
Farmer Suicides are endemic, who knew? Chances are no one’s heard about Azad’s death in Bachlapur village though Lalitpur, where the Congress, the BSP and the SP are in a battle for votes, is only 15 km away. Farmer Suicides aren’t an election plank and parties prefer trading corruption charges. Rahul Gandhi’s much-touted Bundelkhand development authority proposal remains just that. More than 500 committed suicide in the Bundelkhand region last...
More »West Bengal being blind to farmer Suicides: Karat by Shiv Sahay Singh
Farmers unable to bear the costs of agricultural inputs: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Charging the Trinamool Congress-led government with failing to admit the prevalence of farmers' Suicides in the State, Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said here on Sunday that such Suicides were “not seen or heard of” when the Left Front was in power for 34 years. “The government is not ready to accept that the farmers...
More »Sons of the soil by Sonalde Desai
The data show that rural families simply cannot subsist on farm incomes alone There must be a bit of Gandhi in all of us because often our idea of India ultimately boils down to the kisan as the standard bearer of the lakhs of villages that comprise India. Perhaps that is why I tend to look for the signs of transformation in the lives of Indian farmers. The changes in...
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