-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: A SECtion of agricultural scientists, activists and farmer leaders has alleged that there is an undesirable attempt to align India’s Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights (PPR&FRA) 2001 with the International Union for the Protection of Plant Varieties (UPOV), even though the country has no legal obligation to do so. In a letter written to Union Agriculture Minister Radhamohan Singh and PPR&FR Authority Chairperson KV...

-The Hindu Several interventions are needed on the demand and supply side to alleviate farm distress Loan waivers remain the preferred solution for governments to tackle farm distress. S. Mahendra Dev and M. Govinda Rao talk about the inability of governments to think of long-term solutions to tackle farm distress, in a discussion moderated by Vikas Dhoot. Edited excerpts: * Despite farm productivity rising, severe distress in the SECtor is a concern. How...

-The Hindu Business Line Fears over shell companies inflating the GDP are overdone, but the CSO needs to be more transparent in its methods Just as the dust was settling on the controversy over the Centre deferring the release of NSSO’s labour force survey which showed unemployment numbers in an unflattering light, a new one has broken out on the veracity of the MCA-21 database used in GDP calculations. The economic commentariat...

-The Hindu SECtion 56-D of the Conduct of Election Rules allows scrutiny of VVPAT slips in case of disputes. New Delhi: Although the Supreme Court and the Election Commission have not agreed to the Opposition parties’ demand for 50% random physical verification of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) results with Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips, they can still take recourse to SECtion 56-D of the Conduct of Election Rules to request...

-PTI New Delhi: The statistics ministry Wednesday said an official committee will examine the NSS technical report on services SECtor enterprises, which has raised questions over the GDP data. The technical report of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) has generated controversy following its observation that as much as 36 per cent units forming part of MCA-21 database, used in computing GDP, could not be either identifiable or traceable in the field. The...