Seven rounds of trade talks between the EU and India have been concluded without any negotiating texts or positions of either party being made public.  The widespread optimism about the possible signing of the India-European Union (EU) Free Trade Agreement (FTA) sometime in 2010 fails to take into account the many thorny issues that remain to be resolved. Not the least of them are the tariff negotiations on goods and...

Government policies in many developing countries which promote the planting of a narrow base of agricultural crops may hurt farmers in the long run, a United Nations human rights expert warned today. As a result of the global food crisis, developing countries “have massively reinvested in agriculture and have sought to provide farmers with the means of production they need to produce food,” Olivier de Schutter, the Special Rapporteur on...

The agricultural sector is both an emitter of greenhouse gases and a victim of global warming. Technological change, water utilisation and cropping pattern in agriculture have implications both for emission reduction and adaptation. While hydrocarbons and raw material-based industries contribute to global warming, their productivity is not necessarily affected by the phenomenon, as is the case in agriculture. Agricultural production impacts climate change and, in turn, is impacted by it....

Rapid urbanization is placing significant Stress on the budgets of India's local governments and more must be done to improve their financial status to enable them to fund infrastructure projects and delivery of essential services. To address the issue, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has agreed to a request from the Government of India to support a study to assess the state of India's local government finances and identify key...

Global economic and financial crisis (2007-2008) coupled with food and fuel crises (2006-2008) has pushed the number of undernourished in the world to 1.02 billion during 2009, This has happened despite international food commodity prices declining from their earlier peaks, finds a newly released report of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO, www.fao.org) titled: The State of Food Insecurity in the World Report 2009: Economic Crises-Impacts and Lessons Learnt....