The bizarre politics behind the UPA's withdrawal of the controversial sugarcane price order. It was the quickest retreat that any government has made in recent times. It took just a day’s protest outside Parliament before the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government decided to withdraw the controversial provisions of a notification it had issued last month on the payment of fair and remunerative prices to sugarcane farmers. You may describe it as an...

“THE world’s attention is back on your cause.” That was Bill Gates talking to agricultural scientists gathered recently to honour the late Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution. The tycoon-turned-philanthropist was right. This week, the world—in the guise of 60-odd heads of state including the pope—held the first United Nations food summit since 2002. As the world’s attention turns from the receding financial crisis, it is switching to one...

The government is reportedly toying with the idea of restricting the mandate of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to sectors where it would not come in conflict with an existing sectoral regulator. That is a ridiculous idea, and the government should not waste time on it. The proposal has been floated by some powerful people, including those in sectoral regulators, and are keen to protect their fief and perhaps...

Japan on Wednesday said that greenhouse gases emission rate in China and India had reached an alarming proportion and hoped that a legally binding agreement would be arrived at Copenhagen to prevent global warming. Talking to journalists from South East Asia here on Wednesday, Yoshiko Kijima, senior negotiator for Climate Change, Climate Change Division, International Cooperation Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that an agreement at Copenhagen was also important...

In one section of the university building where I teach, there is an enormous and motley collection of discarded computer-related items, stacked and piled in an unwieldy mess. This has been lying around for a while now, nearly a year, not only because of the prolonged bureaucratic procedures involved in getting material "written off", but also because no one knows what to do with the stuff once it has actually...