-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Farmers' plight has worsened due to the non-remunerative nature of agriculture but the Centre on Friday told the Supreme Court that it would not be able to enhance the minimum support price (MSP) for agricultural produce to be 50% more than the input cost. A PIL filed by Consortium of Indian Farmers Association had complained that agriculture had become non-remunerative and was driving farmers to borrow...

-IPS News NEW DELHI: Despite being one of the world's fastest expanding economies, projected to clock seven-percent GDP growth in 2017, India - a nation of 1.2 billion - is trailing behind on many vital social development indices while also hosting one-fourth of the world's poor. While the United Nations prepares to wrap up a decade-and-a-half of poverty alleviation efforts, framed through the lens of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), by the...

-Business Standard Intellectual property policy should focus on implementation A preliminary draft of a new intellectual property rights policy for India has been the occasion for much discussion. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman even felt it necessary to assert on Twitter that the proposed revamp is not meant to appease the United States, given that this remains a major outstanding irritant in relations between the two countries. The government has argued that the...

-The Hindu Business Line   There's no Malthusian problem right now, but without sustainable farming the world will be in serious trouble Food security, a seemingly innocuous phrase, is fast becoming one of the most widely discussed topics of our time. A lot of us would associate ‘food security' as a challenge for the impoverished but it could potentially become a much more widespread problem straddling across geographic and economic divides. The issue of...

-The Hindu The challenge for the Modi government is to evaluate what works in development programming before making large spending decisions Governments in India have always launched big-ticket social development programmes with ambitious goals. The Narendra Modi government is no exception. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan aims to make India open defecation-free by 2019. The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana's financial inclusion programme set a target of opening 10 crore bank accounts by January...