Who can forget Munshi Premchand's short story 'Do Bailon Ki Katha' that immortalizes the incredible bond an Indian farmer has with his bullocks? The economics of Indian farming and animal husbandry, however, are ensuring that this bond might live only in such fables. As will the sense of gratitude and pride with which rural India worships its bullocks on the day of Pithori Amavasya, also known as Bail Pola in...

The absence of a law regulating surrogacy makes India, especially Anand, a top destination for couples from abroad. UNTIL about 2008, the future looked bleak for Sharadaben Solanki. A landless daily-wage worker in Anand, Gujarat, she earned a paltry Rs.600 a month. Her husband earned an equal amount working as a construction labourer. Together the couple supported three children and their parents. That was when she heard from Maganbhai, the owner of...

If Rajiv Gandhi were alive, he would have been delighted to see his view on leakages confirmed by a research study on the public distribution system [How Can Food Subsidies Work Better? Answers from India and the Philippines by Shikha Jha and Bharat Ramaswami (http://www.adb.org/documents/working-papers/2010/economics-wp221.pdf)]. The ADB study showed that the deserving poor in India received only 10 per cent of the benefits from the system. Nearly twice accrues to...

Endosulfan, the pesticide which is widely believed to be responsible for thousands of deaths, diseases and devastation, was able to save its own life largely because of India’s questionable efforts at global forums. The controversial pesticide has been in news for a long time because of its harmful effects on humans, wild life and the environment. Obviously the $100 million industry is going out of the way to defend the...

Sharad Pawar says many states had asked him not to ban the pesticide Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is rooting for endosulfan just before the fifth Conference of Parties (COP) of the Stockholm Convention meets in Geneva from April 25 to April 30 to decide the fate of the pesticide. There seems to be a pattern in Pawar’s resistance to banning endosulfan. Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha on February...