-The Times of India   Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar today flayed the proposed Seeds Bill, 2011, saying that its provisions were tilted heavily in favour of the multi-national companies and against the interests of the farmers.  "There is no guarantee in the proposed Seeds Bill, 2011, that the seeds produced and marketed by the MNCs will be beneficial to the farmers," Kumar said at a function organized to celebrate the 123rd birth...

Maharashtra sounds clarion call on hybrid crop liability Competition is tough in the seed market, which may explain why marketing gimmicks are often used to woo farmers. It’s tougher still for the farmers to get compensation when the claims fail and they are saddled with a bad or damaged crop. Sometimes the state government steps in to offer compensation or the farmers turn to the consumer court for relief. Typically, of...

If India is an aspiring society, education is perhaps the quickest vehicle of social mobility. Right to Education (RTE) is a supplyside intervention by the government that will make education cheaper and, in the process, every child will get a chance to be educated. But an approach that focuses on availability of schools, getting children to the classroom and getting them taught by reasonably well-trained teachers is not enough. Retention...

The government's ambitious economic census to create a comprehensive database of the economic profile of India's households and businesses has been pushed back again because of lack of personnel.  The census department is right now busy with the survey to enumerate people below poverty line and feels a simultaneous economic survey will stretch its resources undermining the data Quality.  "There has been a decision taken to delay the economic census as conducting...

-IANS Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Friday expressed concern that the government's Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) is being seen as a "token sanitation campaign" and rued that women were demanding mobile phones but not toilets.  "Women demand mobile phones, they are not demanding toilets... Sanitation is the much more difficult issue," Ramesh said at the launch of Asia-Pacific Regional MDGs (Millenium Development Goals) Report 2011-12.  Ramesh said women's self-help groups (SHGs) should...