Should the Central government run schools, crèches, pre-schools, dispensaries, employment schemes, the buying and selling of food grains, and build houses, not to speak of selling milk as it does in Delhi? Though the states seem to have taken it as their fate to have schemes on state subjects like education, agriculture and so on tailored for them by the Centre, as if in distrust of the states’ capability to think...

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar recently alleged that Monsanto, the Union environment ministry’s genetic engineering approval committee (GEAC) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) had colluded to start trials of genetically modified maize in Bihar before clearance from the environment ministry and the state government. The charge is significant: Nitish says ICAR’s experimental farms in Bihar did not maintain the stipulated “isolation distance” from normal farmland, meant to...

Stating that there were “fewer women then men in India,” President Pratibha Patil on Thursday cautioned that if this trend continued it would have a negative impact on society. Punjab and Haryana were already seeing the “implications,” she said delivering the Dr. V.N. Tewari Memorial Oration on ‘Women as drivers of a rising India' at the Panjab University here. The President said: “An agenda for empowerment of women should cover gender needs...

Food inflation, hovering in the double digits, may play spoilsport to India’s ability to continue its rapid economic growth. It is truly troubling that food still consumes half of the expenditure of the average Indian household. No wonder a sharp spike in onion prices has the potential to upset the political calculus of social stability. India’s biggest challenge still remains ensuring food and nutritional security to its masses. Notwithstanding the nation’s...

Releasing the election manifesto here on Wednesday, West Bengal Left Front Committee Chairman Biman Bose said the eighth Left Front government will focus on “agriculture, industry, peace, democracy and progress,” in the State if it returns to power. Listing the objectives of the Front in the coming five years, the manifesto states that it wants to ensure that West Bengal is one of the top-ranked States on the three parameters of...