The government has decided to throw its might behind private purchases of farm land overseas to ensure food security for India. The agriculture ministry has sought views from other ministries on an institutional mechanism to extend sovereign support to India Inc's acquisition of farm land abroad that could include guaranteed buyback of harvest from the cultivation overseas. Agriculture secretary PK Basu said that the proposal is in a nascent stage. "We had...
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Dwindling Resources Trigger Global Land Rush by Stephen Leahy
A global scramble for land and mineral resources fuelled by billions of investment dollars is threatening the last remaining wilderness and critical ecosystems, destroying communities and contaminating huge volumes of fresh water, warned environmental groups in London Wednesday. No national park, delicate ecosystem or community is off limits in the voracious hunt for valuable metals, minerals and fossil fuels, said the Gaia Foundation’s report, "Opening Pandora's Box". The intensity of the...
More »Wrong kind of rape by Antara Das
-The Hindustan Times On the night of February 5, a woman, on her way back from visiting a nightclub in Kolkata’s Park Street area, was raped inside the vehicle in which she had been offered a lift. Horrifying as it is, the violence perpetrated was not unique in the annals of urban crime. A mother of two, the 37-year-old was alone, her companions having already left. She had been drinking for a...
More »Dr Abhijit Sen, Member-Planning Commission of India, interviewed by Ajay Vir Jakhar and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
Dr Abhijit Sen is Member, Planning Commission of India. He is a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge (currently on leave as Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University) and has also taught at the Universities of Sussex, Oxford and Cambridge. Besides serving various think tanks in the states and at the centre, Dr Sen has been a consultant with UNDP, ILO, FAO and various other multilateral...
More »Sons of the soil by Sonalde Desai
The data show that rural families simply cannot subsist on farm incomes alone There must be a bit of Gandhi in all of us because often our idea of India ultimately boils down to the kisan as the standard bearer of the lakhs of villages that comprise India. Perhaps that is why I tend to look for the signs of transformation in the lives of Indian farmers. The changes in...
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