-The Hindu Nobel laureate Venkataraman ‘Venki' Ramakrishnan on Monday came down heavily on those opposed to genetic modification of agricultural crops. In an exclusive interview to The Hindu, he said there was definitely a need to be careful while dealing with GM crops with proper regulatory mechanism, but one should not ignore the tremendous potentials on offer such as in terms of developing drought resistant varieties and crops with more nutrients and...
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India’s fiction of victory at Bali - Biraj Patnaik
-Live Mint By giving in to pressure from the US and EU, India has landed itself and the developing world in a bad trade deal The stenographic cacophony in the Indian media had a singular triumphalist message from the ninth World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meet in Bali: India had secured a major victory by safeguarding its food security programme and stood its ground against the US and the European Union...
More »Inflation at 14-Month High, Food Prices Rise by 20%
-Outlook Costly vegetables, particularly potato and onion, pushed the November wholesale inflation to a 14-month high of 7.52 per cent, making it difficult for the Reserve Bank to ease key policy rate. Vegetable prices shot up by 95.25 per cent in November as compared to 78.38 per cent in the previous month, said the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) inflation data released today. The overall inflation in the food segment comprising wheat, pulses, vegetables,...
More »In the Balance: The National Food Security Act vis-Ã -vis the WTO Agreement on Agriculture -Sudha Narayanan
-eSocialSciences.com This piece analyzes the implications of the National Food Security Act for India's commitments under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) in the context of widespread concern that they might be mutually incompatible. An analysis of support to rice and wheat for the period 1995-2012 suggests that the current scale of operations are at levels implied by the NFSA and that it is possible to leverage existing provisions in the...
More »Why beg at Bali? -Uttam Gupta
-The Indian Express India faces no risk of violating its commitments under WTO The Indian delegation, led by commerce minister Anand Sharma, is approaching the WTO Ministerial in Bali with a ‘begging bowl'. The government has agreed to the so-called ‘peace clause'-a euphemism for not taking any penal action for violating commitments under Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)-proposed by WTO Director General but with the caveat that this will remain in place until...
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