Even as the area around Parliament was swamped by crowds of Anna Hazare's supporters, demanding a stronger Lokpal Bill on Wednesday, a small group of environmental activists staged their own demonstration against a different bill, the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill, 2011. Science and Technology Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh was scheduled to introduce the controversial BRAI Bill in the Lok Sabha, but the House did not conduct regular business due...

-The Economic Times   Concern over protecting the 'holy cow' status to the job guarantee programme, MGNREGA, appears to be overshadowing genuine worries in the government over increasing shortage of unskilled farm labour. Shooting down a suggestion from Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar that the programme may be suspended during the peak farming season, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has said that there should not be any dilution in the programme. In an...

Sharp differences persist in the government over whether and how much of an impact the impending food law is likely to have on open market food prices. At a time when input costs for farmers have already gone up significantly and threaten volatility in food prices, the food ministry has dismissed apprehensions voiced by Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices ( CACP) chairman Ashok Gulati on the issue. Last week,...

Reforms in the supply-chain system can help India tackle the demand-supply mismatch in essential food items Food inflation may have dropped to single digit but since that fall is set against last year’s elevated double-digit base, it continues to hurt the poor — 65 per cent of their disposable income goes towards food. The government often defends its failure to tame inflation by arguing that it has no magic wand to...

-The Telegraph   A vigilance court here today ordered investigation into Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy’s role in a palm oil import deal when he was the finance minister in the K. Karunakaran government in 1992. Chandy today offered to step down and face the case “legally and morally” but was restrained from doing so by leaders of the Congress and other ruling UDF constituents as he was not chargesheeted, sources said. “I...