State governments will soon have a greater say in the stand the central government takes on key issues in the ongoing talks for opening up goods and services market in global trade at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The commerce department will hold regular consultations with state government officials on delicate issues such as safeguards to protect agriculture against indiscriminate imports and shielding sensitive industrial-goods sectors from competition, a commerce...

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy told trade delegates in a fax on 12 May that cotton has become a “litmus test” for the “development dimension” of the Doha Round. At a recent review of the issue’s standing in WTO talks, some countries, such as Tanzania, alleged that no progress has been made since 2005. Leonce Kone, the trade minister from Burkina Faso - a cotton-exporting Least Developed Country (LDC) - joined Geneva-based...

Police lathicharged farmers here on Tuesday when they went on a rampage for not getting seeds from a government outlet. Farmers assembled in the seed market here on Tuesday morning to purchase the seeds. The went on a rampage when they were told that the Rajasthan Marketing Cooperative Society (KVSS) has run out of the stock of pearl millet seeds. They assembled at the Paota circle in the morning and...

Many governments in the developing world lack the will to eradicate child labour, says the third ILO global report on the deplorable practice. The effects of the present global economic and financial crisis, rather than its causes, have been the central preoccupation of organisations such as the International Labour Organisation in recent times. The ILO, in particular, has focussed on the impact of the crisis on populations within the least...

Monsanto licencees have earned over Rs 1,500 crore since 2002. A quiet but determined battle is being fought in the courts, and outside, by US agricultural biotech giant Monsanto, its Indian affiliates and seed lobbyists to free the prices of genetically modified Bt cotton from state government control. At stake is huge business running into several thousand crore of rupees, with royalty alone on the Bt cotton seeds grossing over Rs...