-The Indian Express Govt plans to change existing law to ensure availability of quality seeds to farmers. How will the proposed Bill to replace The Seeds Act, 1966 meet its objective of ‘regulating quality of seeds for sale, import, export’? The existing 1966 law already provides for regulation of the quality of seeds. What does the new Bill seek to change? The current Act only covers “notified kinds or varieties of seeds”. Thus,...
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A potential seedbed for private profits -R Ramakumar
-The Hindu The new Seeds Bill is tilted against farmers’ interests and loaded in favour of seed companies. After passing through at least two versions, Seeds Bill 2019 is now under Parliament’s consideration. The earlier versions of the Bill, in 2004 and 2010, had generated heated debates. The present version promises to be no different. In 1994, India signed the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). In 2002, India also...
More »Economic growth slowest in 26 quarters -R Suryamurthy
-The Telegraph An over six-year low of 4.5 per cent The Narendra Modi government’s bluster on the state of the Indian economy was bottled on Friday after the National Statistical Office (NSO) came out with data that showed growth in the second quarter had sunk to an over six-year low of 4.5 per cent — the slowest expansion in 26 quarters. The sharp slowdown was triggered by a contraction in the manufacturing sector...
More »Give farmers their due credit -Ashok Gulati & Ritika Juneja
-The Indian Express All crop loans should be routed through Kisan Credit Cards. This will ensure that farmers do not use the loans for non-agricultural purposes. Normally, a sector’s credit off-take is a sign of its health. Higher the off-take, the better the sector’s performance. There has been a healthy off-take of ground-level credit (GLC) in agriculture and allied sectors. In the financial year (FY) 2018-19, banks disbursed Rs 12.55 trillion...
More »Too much too often: Antibiotics in Indian crops can make them ineffective -Bhavya Khullar, Rajeshwari Sinha & Amit Khurana
-Down to Earth Antibiotics are indiscriminately used on food crops in several parts of the country, adding to the burden of antibiotic resistance Dharampal Singh just cannot stop admiring the cauliflowers glistening with beads of dew on his farm near the Yamuna banks in Delhi. Next to the plot, rows of radishes, spinach, fenugreek and bottle gourds lie shining in the morning sun. “These untainted vegetables fetch me a premium in the...
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