-Kafila.org The last few months have seen an unusual public engagement around questions of secularism, freedom of speech, sedition and the like, with furious debates everywhere from our campuses, streets and TV studios to the floor of Parliament. The budget session has been enlivened by scenes of high drama, with the leading lights of the Treasury benches bringing colour, sound and fury to their tutorials on patriotism and nationalism. While these high-decibel...

-The Hindu As the government pushes for ‘Make in India’, it could begin by unmaking the damage the post-1991 reforms inflicted on domestic industry. This year marks 25 years since the so-called “economic reforms” were launched in July 1991. By now, broad contours of the policies and practices that characterised such reforms are well known, viz. radical deregulation, marketisation and privatisation of the industrial, technological and financial sectors, and an across-the-board...

-The Hindu Business Line The wool of this north Karnataka breed has helped the herder community handcraft a crorepati business These sheep, strikingly black, have a rich coat of coarse wool that has long provided the army and police force with a steady supply of warm blankets. Called Deccani, the lambs are sheared twice a year, each of them yielding a little over one kg of raw wool, which is ideal for...

-Livemint.com As the country still continues to debate the beef ban and its impact on agrarian distress, data shows that what’s really being hit is the sex ratio of the bovine population New Delhi: Bulls are missing, both in India’s equity markets and in its fields. As the country still continues to debate the beef ban and its impact on agrarian distress, data shows that what’s really being hit is the...

-FirstPost.com Giant agricultural corporations are seriously impacting the right to food of women, especially in developing countries like India by increasingly suing farmers for breaching patent laws, a UN expert said. “These big companies are suing farmers because the farmers are using (patented seeds) without the permission (from agricultural corporations) or (are not) buying the particular seeds. This is a very serious issue and millions of dollars the corporations are taking from...