On February 9, 2010, the then Minister of Environment and Forests, Government of India, Jairam Ramesh, imposed an indefinite moratorium on the introduction of Bt Brinjal in India. It is necessary and desirable to quote the order verbatim. It reads as follows: It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary based approach and impose a moratorium on the release of Bt Brinjals till such time independent scientific studies establish, to...

As more and more people connect to the web, governments across the world are looking to regulate and control the virtual world. In India too there is a growing debate on whether the web, especially social networking sites, should be regulated or not. In an exclusive article for The Times of India, Vint Cerf, considered one of the fathers of the internet along with Bob Kahn, says the beauty of...

-The Telegraph A one-stop web-enabled solution for silk farmers of the country was launched today. SILKS (Sericulture, Information Linkages and Knowledge System) was inaugurated by Ishita Roy, member secretary of Central Silk Board, Bangalore, today through video conferencing. It is expected to go a long way in addressing the needs and problems of silk farmers in the country. “This should be used as a tool for decision making and states should start working on...

Even as it recognizes that developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region like India must to grow to eke millions of its people out of poverty, a United Nations' report has made it clear that given the realities of climate change "growing first and cleaning up later" is no longer an option for these developing countries. The report, "One Planet to Share" by the United Nations Development Programme, marks a subtle...

Just in case our friends in the media were looking for more evidence, a new ILO report clinches the connection between old age pension and a country’s well being. The ILO report “World Social Security Report 2010/11: Providing coverage in times of crisis and beyond” puts India’s social security coverage in perspective of its peers. (the report can be accessed at http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_146566.pdf.  India is not only nearly at the bottom...