Days after several persons were hospitalised after exposure to radioactive waste at a West Delhi scrap market, it emerges that the only data available with the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) is almost three years old. And even that is alarming: 5,300 tonnes of hazardous waste was generated in the Capital every year, according to the survey last conducted in 2007. The state pollution control body has no information on...

A meticulously researched book by A. Vaidyanathan, Agricultural Growth in India: Role of Technology, Incentives and Institutions, is an illuminating scholarly work. Thinking about it one realizes the dismal and declining state of Indian agriculture and the poor governance at both Central and state government levels that has brought it to this sorry pass. A valuable compendium of data and analysis of Indian agriculture since Independence, it is a valuable...

UNLESS THE prices of vegetables skyrocket and become a scandal — as they have over several weeks now, or as did the price of sugar last year — little in the out-of-sight world of Indian agriculture excites the imagination of the city folks, who influence, rather disproportionately, everything from government policies to newspaper content. Few of those who enjoy a hearty meal and wax lovingly on their favourite dishes can...

Though Palakkad district in Kerala, where the Coca Cola plant is situated is considered as the ‘rice bowl of Kerala’, a part of the district falling in the rain shadow region of the Western Ghats is drought prone. Plachimada, where the Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages Private Limited (HCBPL) factory was set up had been classified ‘arable’. The villagers are predominantly landless agricultural labourers with almost 80 percent of the population...

WELL before Budget 2010-11 was presented, inflation had emerged as the principal economic problem in the country. With food-price inflation running at close to 20 per cent, even the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre had been forced to recognise it as a problem that deserved as much attention as the objective of achieving a 9 or 10 per cent rate of growth, if not more. In fact,...