As the demand for a ban on Endosulfan in India is gaining pitch and Karnataka being the latest state to ban the pesticide, the Pesticide Manufacturers and Formulators Association of India (PMFAI) is going around crying foul. They are leaving no stone unturned to save endosulfan. Press meets across the country and plugged newspaper reports maligning studies that have indicted endosulfan in the past is a desperate attempt to save...

India has inked 20 MoUs in the field of agriculture with U.S., Russia, Italy and others in the last three years for cooperation in research and development and capacity building, Parliament was informed today. Besides fostering bilateral partnership, India also entered into agreement in the farm sector in multilateral format. Broad based and inclusive multilateral cooperation is pursued through international organisations such as Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP)...

The 2010 Chameli Devi Jain award for “Outstanding Woman Media Person” was presented to a former Tehelka correspondent from Thiruvananthapuram, Shahina K.K, at a function here on Tuesday for her “demonstrated ability to focus on issues that have deep social consequences impacting lives and concerns of ordinary people.” Ms. Shahina, who has 13 years of experience in print and television media and is presently writing for Open magazine, accepted the award...

A section of Congress is set to back the demand of chief ministers of BJP and other Opposition-ruled states to reject the Seeds Bill, 2010, in its present form. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, spearheading the campaign against the bill, has told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar that the bill, whose avowed purpose is to facilitate production and supply of seeds of quality, will put the peasantry...

Out of 400 government offices in the Pune district, till January 2010, not even a single one had a board displaying the names of the Public Information Officer (PIO) or the Appelate Authority. However under the Right to information Act (RTI), 2005, it is mandatory for all offices to display such information prominently. A year later 240 of them have put up the boards with names, addresses and contact numbers of...