-CaravanMagazine.in As swarms of desert locusts descended upon India this year, toxic insecticides were sprayed over two lakh hectares of land to contain their spread. But the measure could have serious environmental and health consequences. India’s Locust Warning Organization, or LWO, a body under the ministry of agriculture, uses fifteen different formulations of eight insecticides for controlling their spread. Five of these insecticides are banned, restricted or withdrawn in one or...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal announced on Thursday that residents of 1,797 unauthorised colonies of Delhi will soon get ownership rights to their properties. The bonanza comes a few months before assembly elections in Delhi and two days after the Union housing and urban affairs ministry circulated a Cabinet proposal for formulating a framework for the exercise. The cut-off date for regularisation of these colonies is...

-The Telegraph Even pro-BJP groups recognize that the registration exercise could end up condemning Indians to an appalling fate The National Register of Citizens process in Assam ploughs relentlessly on. At the end of this month a full list is to be published, ostensibly of all Indians identified in the state. That is when the scale of misery and jubilation may be gauged. Yet that’s not the end of this long, complex...

-Press Release by Beej Adhikaar Manch dated 10th May, 2019 Activists point out that this is after all an undertaking given by all applicants to PPV&FR Authority for varietal registration “Government of India should proactively take up measures to uphold farmers’ rights – We will continue our public campaign to secure this” say farmers rights groups Ahmedabad / New Delhi, 10th May 2019: PepsiCo India Holdings Ltd, after having sought and obtained an...

-The Hindu Business Line India’s Protection of Plant Varieties Act spells out rights of farmers vis-a-vis breeders, which resulted in a pushback for PepsiCo The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act (PPVFRA), which introduced intellectual property protection in Indian agriculture, faced its biggest test in its implementation phase of nearly a decade and a half, when PepsiCo India initiated legal proceedings against four farmers in Gujarat for “illegally” growing...