One man’s fiscal problem is another man’s lifeline. Trigger happy bureaucrats and economists may love shooting down subsidies because it bloats the fiscal deficit and burdens the government but the simple fact is that in a one billion strong nation, in which nearly one in every three live below the poverty line, one needs an effective and efficient method through which privileged tax payers can support the poor. Last week, finance...

ZAVOORA, India (AlertNet) – Amid thousands of tree stumps stretching over almost 60 hectares (150 acres) of bare plateau, there are signs of life. Delicate saplings of kail and deodar conifers are growing between other newly planted deciduous trees.  The woodland had been cut down illegally by loggers and encroached upon for farming. But forestry officials here in Shopian district, a two-hour drive south of Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s...

The disaster in Japan revealed many risks that were earlier unknown; it is important to assess the risks in India in a transparent manner and explain which are worth taking. The nuclear plant accident at Fukushima, Japan, in March 2011 exemplifies the prescient remark of nuclear reactor pioneer, the late Alvin Weinberg, that “a nuclear accident somewhere is a nuclear accident everywhere.” After Fukushima, many countries initiated a reconsideration of the...

-The United Nations Globalized food systems and the spread of Western lifestyles has spawned an international public health disaster with over a billion people suffering from undernourishment while another billion remain overweight or obese, an independent United Nations expert warned today. “Our food systems create sick people,” said Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, as he presented his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council...

Bt cotton has doubled the seed industry and boosted the fortunes of seed firms. But yields still need to improve In the last 10 years, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton and its impact on farmers has perhaps been the most talked about topic in Indian agriculture since the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s. Not only has farmers’ income from growing Bt cotton risen by almost 67 per cent in the...