India, the world’s second-biggest rice grower, may have a record harvest this year as increased planting offset drought in the east of the country. Production may total 100 million tonnes in the year ending June 2011, compared with 89.3 million tonnes a year ago, said Vijay Setia, president of All India Rice Exporters’ Association. Output was a record 99.2 million tonnes in the year ended June 30, 2009, according to the...

Bhartiya Janta Party will set up a memorial to honour farmers who lost their lives in the police firing at Aligarh, declared the BJP state president, Surya Pratap Shahi. Addressing a farmers' meeting in Aligarh on Tuesday, Shahi said that farmers were being exploited by the BSP and suffering as its consequence only because they lacked to put up a collective front. Now, the BJP, he said, would strive to...

India's growth story in a crisis-hit world has been globally applauded. Still, the prime minister did well not to use his Independence Day address as a mere occasion for back-patting. This isn't yet "new India" where growth's gains percolate to every citizen. Not only must structural nuts and bolts be fixed before we get there, the economic blueprint itself needs a sharper reformist orientation. To its credit, the UPA has...

The 2010 Seeds Bill that has been introduced in Parliament does address some of the major concerns in the aborted 2004 version, but strangely a number of important correctives – on regulation, consistency and punishment – that had been incorporated in the 2008 version (which lapsed in 2009) have now been modified or dropped altogether. What forces are pushing the government to act against the interests of India’s farmers? The third...

With Europe and Gulf countries, putting in place stringent safety norms for ensuring that pesticide residue in agricultural crops remain below prescribed limits, basmati (aromatic rice) exporters from India have urged the Union agriculture ministry to ensure that farmers use less pesticide. Europe and Gulf nations are main export destinations for Indian basmati rice. In a letter to agriculture ministry, Vijay Setia, president, All India Rice Exporters’ Association has said that some...