On February 9, 2010, the then Minister of Environment and Forests, Government of India, Jairam Ramesh, imposed an indefinite moratorium on the introduction of Bt Brinjal in India. It is necessary and desirable to quote the order verbatim. It reads as follows: It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary based approach and impose a moratorium on the release of Bt Brinjals till such time independent scientific studies establish, to...

It is mostly caused by deliberate neglect and designed failure of the way we manage water and land It’s drought time again. Nothing new in this announcement. Each year, first we have crippling droughts between December and June, and then devastating floods in the next few months. It’s a cycle of despair, which is more or less predictable. But this is not an inevitable cycle of nature we must live...

-PTI   Agriculture experts expressed concerns over shrinking of farm land by nearly 0.2 million hectares and suggested enacting strong legislation to stop shifting of land for non-farming purposes. According to government statistics, the cultivable land in the country has come down to 182.5 million hectares during 2009-10 compared to 182.7 million tonnes during 2005-06. Director General of ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) S Ayyappan said shrinking of farm is a matter of...

The Government of India has formally launched the news Guidelines of the MGNAREGA based on the Mihir Shah Committee report. The news guidelines include many new works under conservation activities and it strengthens the hands of the village panchayats and gram sabhas. However, the list of works does not include the activities under the system of rice intensification (SRI) which encourages scientific method of paddy cultivation with better yield in...

With the elderly likely to constitute a quarter of India's population by 2050, there is need for a publicly-funded, universal scheme that will overcome destitution among the aged India's social security system is woefully inadequate, when compared even to those in third world economies with no higher per capita incomes. Some States in India have fairly comprehensive social security schemes — notably Kerala, also West Bengal and Tamil Nadu — but...