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...

Governments in India — Centre and states — spend around one per cent of the country's GDP on health. Only five countries — Burundi, Myanmar, Pakistan , Sudan and Cambodia — have a lower figure than this. But private spending on the crucial sector is 4.2 per cent of GDP, among the top 20 countries in the world. Within this private spend, employers pay for about 9 per cent and...

Posco, whose mega steel project in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur district hangs in balance after Ministry of Environment and Forests issued a stop-work order last week, has now questioned the Naveen Patnaik government’s plan to reserve 90 per cent jobs in the unskilled and semi-skilled category for “local people” for all upcoming industrial projects. A High Level Clearance Authority of the state government chaired by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik recently cleared a proposal...

One of the most intriguing features of India's agrarian economy in recent years is the persistence of agrarian distress in many regions, even while agricultural credit flow has risen sharply. Rising flow of credit to agriculture is normally associated with buoyancy in the farm sector. A closer look at the data on agricultural credit reveals that what is termed agricultural credit may have very little to do with agriculture, the...

The Indian government has approved the inclusion of information on caste in the ongoing population census. The controversial decision was taken by a group of ministers, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. Caste-based parties say the information will help the government target affirmative action benefits better. But critics say caste is the most regressive feature of Indian society; that it is repressive, reinforces hierarchy and breeds inequity. India has been conducting the national census...