-The Financial Express Dismantling cane economy will not be painless, shift crop to drip irrigation Opinion-makers, from agricultural economists and academics to environmentalists, have blamed sugarcane for aggravating the water shortage in Marathwada. But the view is contested. ‘I reject the hypothesis,’ says Venkat Mayande, during a conversation in Pune. Mayande was vice-chancellor of Akola’s Panjabrao Deshmukh Agricultural University till 2012. How can 2.1 lakh hectare (ha) of cane cause a shortage of...

There is a general perception that men are the primary breadwinners and, therefore, they are the ones responsible for fending for their families. However, recently released data from the population Census 2011 shows that around 3.3 crore households in the country are headed by women. In other words, overall there are 13.2 percent female-headed households (See Chart 1). The Census data shows that there are 59.4 lakh single member female-headed...

-The Hindu India’s first IPR policy trots out the worn western fairy tale that more IP means innovation, and encourages the pointless privatisation of indigenous knowledge India’s National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy, released in mid-May, is a bewildering document. There are two ways to read this policy. The first is as a gigantic exercise in dissimulation, with a terse declaration — India is not changing its IPR laws — tucked inside...

-TheWire.in The right to information and to education give the government the mandate to make policies that guarantee the delivery of educational resources to all. But the Copyright Act needs to be amended to strengthen fair use exceptions for educational purposes. Last August, the University of Maryland University College made an announcement that it had replaced its undergraduate textbooks with open educational resources (OER), thereby becoming the first university in the world...

-The Hindu Less toxic than processed and red meat. Potassium bromate, the chemical additive widely prevalent in bread and refined flour and associated with cancer, is in the same league as coffee, aloe vera, mobile phone radiation and carbon black, a key ingredient in eye-liner. It also is less toxic than processed and red meat, according to a perusal by The Hindu of the list of agents deemed potentially cancerous by the International...