Ignoring criticism from various quarters, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar Saturday strongly favoured the introduction of Genetically Modified (GM) food crops in the country to ensure food security.Pawar, who was here to inaugurate the ninth edition of Agro Tech 2010, said that GM food crops are necessary to meet the increasing demand of food grains and new challenges of agriculture in the country.'If we want to achieve 100 percent food security,...

There has been no major impact on wheat production of the rising temperature in India, Minister of State for Agriculture K.V. Thomas said Friday even as experts say global warming threat looms large over farm productivity. "There is no major impact observed on wheat production due to rising temperature in the recent past. There has been an increasing trend in wheat production since 2007-08," Thomas said in a written reply to...

Corruption, No. 1 national security threat, is eating into the vitals of the state, enfeebling internal security and crimping foreign policy.  India confronts several pressing national security threats. But only one of them — political corruption — poses an existential threat to the state, which in reality has degenerated into a republic of mega-scandals. The pervasive misuse of public office for private gain is an evil, eating into the vitals...

The Supreme Court today asked central vigilance commissioner P.J. Thomas to explain why his appointment as head of the country’s top anti-corruption watchdog shouldn’t be scrapped even as the embattled bureaucrat hung on to his post. The notices to Thomas and the central government were a first from the court, which had so far only questioned Thomas’s appointment as CVC for his alleged involvement in a palm oil import case. The vigilance...

A death threat to a historic 13-year-old international treaty on climate change that surfaced last year appears to have intensified and may stall progress at the UN climate change talks here in this scenic Mexican city. Several industrialised countries are opposing the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 treaty that had set legally binding targets only on industrialised countries for the reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases up to the...