-Deccan Herald The Green Revolution has changed life in Indian villages, but the main beneficiaries were the landlords. Daily labourers remain poor and marginalised. The limits of using ever more fertiliser and pesticides are becoming apparent. Many farmers are confused because extension services want them to reconsider practices they were told to abandon not that long ago. A member of the Santal tribe, an Adivasi community, assesses things from the village perspective. Since independence...

-The Tribune The community has to pay the cost of environmental degradation if sustainable agricultural practices are not followed. Food can also be produced by in-built provisions for ecological services. For this, sustainability issues have to be addressed with policy support. An ecosystem is a dynamic, complex, functional unit of diverse living organisms, physical environment and humans are its integral part. The wellbeing of mankind depends upon food, water, fibre, medicine, flood...

-The Times of India     Attempt to muzzle newspapers by withdrawing advertising for critical news coverage A new report by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN) has strongly condemned "soft censorship" by governments and regulators as a "very serious threat to media independence and the very viability of media companies". WAN, which is the umbrella organization of newspapers representing more than 18,000 publications and 15,000 online sites in 120 countries...

-The Business Standard     They were unimpressed by the UPA's misguided socialism, but they worry about the new regime's free-market orientation too Consider this paradox. The Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was decimated in the elections in spite of several years of good monsoon and rising agricultural production. Consider another paradox. This was the regime that implemented policies that were presumed to be pro-farmer: the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the...

-The Hindu   Narendra Modi has to address not just the current stagnation in manufacturing but also look at ways of stimulating investments in the sector Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi, it is said, sleeps just six hours a day. Even that could become a luxury as he buckles down to his job and begins the challenging task of turning around the economy. The economic legacy handed down to him by the United Progressive...