-The Indian Express Indian agriculture has made remarkable progress since 1947 and credit for this goes mainly to the farmer. Now we need to repay our debt to the agricultural community As India celebrates its 68th year of independence, it is time to pause and look back at the major challenges we have faced since Independence and how they were overcome, as well as at the mistakes and follies we committed...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: India scored an important success when it fully protected its traditional knowledge by stalling a leading UK-based laboratory's move to patent a medicinal composition containing turmeric, pine bark and green tea for treating hair loss. The move comes just days after India foiled a similar attempt by US-based consumer goods giant Colgate-Palmolive from patenting a mouthwash formula containing herbal extracts. The vigilance of the Traditional Knowledge...

-The Indian Express   Socio-economic census data provides valuable pointers — and reality checks — for policymakers    The socio-economic and caste census (SECC) 2011 paints a picture of rural India weighed down by landlessness and lack of non-farm jobs. More than 60 per cent of the 17.91 crore rural households covered under the census qualified as deprived on 14 parameters. This is a set of people who do not own a two-wheeler...

-The Hindu Although the SECC’s objectives are not likely to be met, it is a big step towards providing accurate information on the well-being of the people. The release of data for rural households from the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) is only the latest step in India’s tortured history of trying to count its poor. The idea behind the SECC was technocratic. Commissioned by the United Progressive Alliance in 2011,...

-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...