Civil society groups have cautioned the government against introducing genetically modified crops in the food chain and questioned the credentials of a panel of experts to look into the biosafety of Bt Brinjal, which will come up before the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) on Wednesday. The committee was set up by the GEAC to look into the findings of independent experts who raised concerns at the safety of Bt...

The recession is a promising moment to expand NREGA with greater emphasis on building social capital in a big way.  Soon after assuming office, the first UPA government took an impressive step for the alleviation of rural poverty by launching the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It was, indeed, a wise move to insulate the programme from the vicissitudes of electoral politics by enacting the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act...

The procurement of rice for distribution under the proposed Right to Food scheme has renewed the fears of irreversible depletion of water table in India’s grain producing regions. It is feared that unless more scientific and progressive methods of rice cultivation are used, the otherwise welcome scheme would lead to more sowing of summer paddy leading to more injudicious water use and further soil degradation. Many rural NGOs and agricultural...

As the 6-year-old son in an upper-class Brahmin family, Bindeshwar Pathak wanted to know what would happen if he touched a scavenger, one of India's "untouchables," stuck at the bottom of the country's social order and fated to collect and dispose of human waste. When he did, his grandmother punished him by forcing him to swallow cow dung and urine, and making him bathe in water from the Ganges. "This...

What’s more important to a hungry child? Food now, or future environmental worries? I know I’m on sticky ground here, but it would be hypocritical not to ask the question when the world is mourning the death of one person who, literally, helped save millions in the developing world — in our part of it, especially — from hunger. In his lifetime, Norman Borlaug was hailed as the father of...