Ten Journalists have been selected to spend time with rural communities, understand their anxieties and specialise in covering the country’s rural crises, through an initiative of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. The recipients of the Inclusive Media Fellowship are: Mahim Pratap Singh of The Hindu (to work on the impact of distress migration on nutrition security and livelihoods in five districts of Orissa), Joaquim Fernandes of The...

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...

Pushed to a corner by Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s peremptory freeze on Bt brinjal, the UPA government took the first step of finding a way out. And it needed the authority of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to do that. In a clear enunciation of the government’s policy on GM crops — a policy that got clouded by Ramesh’s rhetoric — the Prime Minister underlined the importance of biotechnology in productivity...

“The main instrument for global food security is national food production. Every country has an obligation to provide food for its own population. Trade alone cannot solve the fundamental challenges regarding hunger,” believes Norwegian Minister of Agriculture and Food Lars Peder Brekk. When agriculture is Norway’s second biggest national industry and provides for half of the Norwegian people’s needs, it’s no wonder that he sees eye to eye with India...

‘Steps needed to ensure effective utilisation of funds’  Taking a serious note of the non-allocation and under-utilisation of resources for various government schemes, civil society organisations have sought more funds for flagship schemes in the health and education sectors in the Union budget and steps to ensure utilisation of the funds allocated. The Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability and Oxfam India said on Tuesday that there was a need...