The 2010 Seeds Bill that has been introduced in Parliament does address some of the major concerns in the aborted 2004 version, but strangely a number of important correctives – on regulation, consistency and punishment – that had been incorporated in the 2008 version (which lapsed in 2009) have now been modified or dropped altogether. What forces are pushing the government to act against the interests of India’s farmers? The third...

The farming community has welcomed chief minister M Karunanidhi's promise to supply free motors to small farmers. Cauvery Delta Farmers' Welfare Association secretary, S Ranganathan, said, "We appreciate the chief minister's gesture. I request the government to give submersible motors instead of mono-block ones. Also, a majority of small and marginal farmers don't have power connection. The state should look at the possibility of providing motors and power connections to...

Small and medium farmers in the State will get energy efficient motors for their pumpsets free of cost to replace the existing inefficient high energy consuming motors, Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi announced on Sunday. “In the case of other farmers, motors will be given at 50 per cent subsidy. This move will save 20 per cent of electricity,” the Chief Minister said in his Independence Day address from Fort St George. He...

JHABUA, India — Inside the drab district hospital, where dogs patter down the corridors, sniffing for food, Ratan Bhuria’s children are curled together in the malnutrition ward, hovering at the edge of starvation. His daughter, Nani, is 4 and weighs 20 pounds. His son, Jogdiya, is 2 and weighs only eight. Landless and illiterate, drowned by debt, Mr. Bhuria and his ailing children have staggered into the hospital ward after falling...

Complexity and unsolved problems are at the very heart of the sustainability challenge, and at the very heart of M.S. Swaminathan's thinking and essays. In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus offered the piercing insight that geometric population growth would inevitably outstrip food production, leaving society destitute and hungry. Since that time, our optimism of beating the “Malthusian curse” has waxed and waned. Few people in modern history have done more to help...