Indian agriculture was mostly organic before the advent of the Green Revolution. However, the widespread adoption of nutrient-responsive and high-yielding varieties greatly promoted the use of INOrganic fertilisers, weedicides and insecticides. The compulsion to grow more for food security has led farmers to overlook food quality norms and an indiscriminate use of natural resources. Based on three principal factors viz., mixed cropping, crop rotation and use of organic fertilizers, the National...

Built into the economic dogma of growth first is the ingrained notion held by large segments of the nation's elite that the fabric of inequality is meant to remain unimpaired.  “The Challenge of Employment in India; An Informal Economy Perspective” sums up the findings of a National Commission set up in September 2004 to review the status of the unorganised/ínformal sector in India (Volume I Main Report and volume II...

The proposed land acquisition Bill should adopt scores of suggestions coming from judges. Few laws have drawn criticism from the Supreme Court with such regular frequency as has the Land Acquisition Act, all the more so in recent times as the weak links in the archaic law have led to continuing legal and political battles and bloodletting. Last month, the Supreme Court identified five areas of conflict arising from the inadequacies of...

New Delhi has done well to declare its intention to play a proactive role at the forthcoming Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at Nagoya (Japan) in October for thrashing out a legally binding pact on access to and benefit-sharing of biological resources. Being one of the world’s 12 mega biodiversity centres, India has substantial stakes in both preserving the biodiversity and capitalising on its commercial potential. Though the CBD, signed...

“If one goes through the agricultural production history in the last six decades, the number of farmers opting out of agriculture, suicides of hundreds of farmers in the past 10 years, and shrinking cultivation lands are ample proof that our agriculture policy is totally wrong,” says Mr. R. Kulandaisamy a progressive farmer and liquid bio-fertilizer producer called Tari Biotech in Thanjavur. “Though policy makers and certain sections of the scientific fraternity...