-Hindustan Times Many years ago, Jagdish Bhagwati, a very distinguished economist long before he became one of the patron saints of the NDA, published an important paper on what he called Directly Unproductive Activities or DUP. These bore a close relation to what his friend and well-known South Asia scholar, Anne Krueger, had called rent-seeking activities in some slightly earlier work. Both made the important point that the social cost of...

-India Today Believe it or not, almost 70 per cent of the national Capital was used for organic farming in 2011-2012, according to National Project on Organic Farming (NPOF), which comes under the Ministry of Agriculture. While the total geographical area of Delhi is 1.48 lakh hectares, NPOF data shows 100238.74 hectares (almost twice the size of Mumbai) was used for organic farming during that period. What smacks of data fudging and...

-The Times of India AURANGABAD: Over 350 like-minded organizations are set to launch a nation-wide agitation from Monday to protest against the contentious Land Acquisition Bill. Social activist Medha Patkar made the announcement in the city while addressing a gathering of farmers. She said organizations of farmers, traders and fishermen would stage demonstration in different parts of the country and mount pressure on the Union government to stop it from going...

-Economic and Political Weekly While the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act 2001 is a progressive piece of legislation that recognises farmers' rights to seed, it demands payment of an annual maintenance fee by the farmers to protect the varieties which they have been cultivating and conserving for years, only because these varieties have been brought under legal protection through national legislation. Parameswaran Prajeesh (prajeesh@mssrf.res.in) is a researcher with the...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: In a landmark judgment, the Bombay high court has paved the way for the state to pay higher compensation to farmers whose land it acquires for public projects. The court held that financial constraints or project cost escalations cannot be a reason to shortchange farmers and set aside a government decision to fix a multiplier factor of 1.1 on market rates even though the law says...