-The Hindu Gajendra Singh Rajput from Dausa. Hargovind Harane from Vidarbha . Gosai Patra from Bardhaman. Why did these farmers take their own lives? In the light of the burning issue of farmer suicides across the country, A.R. Vasavi looks at the plight of the marginalised cultivator. Basamma and her ailing husband have carried and spread their five sacks of ragi (finger millet) from their half-acre plot to the local tar road...

-Economic and Political Weekly Ten years on, the progressive provisions of the amended Indian Patents Act are being watered down. Ten years have passed since the Indian Patents Act, 1970 was amended in 2005 to bring the country’s laws in line with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The most important of the 2005 amendments was the introduction of product patents for 20 years, including for pharmaceutical products,...

-Livemint.com The prospect of weak monsoon is never good news, but this time it comes on top of a rabi harvest destroyed by unseasonal rainfall, and a spate of farmer suicides The prospect of a sub-normal monsoon is never good news, but this time it comes on top of a rabi harvest destroyed by being rained on at the wrong time, and a spate of farmer suicides. The only option is...

-Tehelka In these times of agrarian distress, NK Bhoopesh revisits the ‘revolution’ that changed Indian agriculture The growing number of farmer suicides across the country has punched holes in the dominant narrative of India’s rise as a global economic power articulated ad nauseum by big business, mainstream politicians and the corporate media. It has also put a question mark on another familiar tale: that the green revolution introduced in the 1960s was...

-The New Indian Express KOCHI: Questioning the Green Revolution (GR) is like blasphemy in mainstream agricultural discourses. But, plant scientist-turned farmer Dr Debal Deb, an atheist by choice and seed conservationist by vocation, dares to question the very basics of the Green Revolution, and rips down the tall claims of its proponents. Delivering a lecture on ‘A Journey Towards Ecotopia,’ at the Renewal Centre here on Saturday, Dr Deb held the Green...