Protests marked the 10th anniversary of the introduction of genetically modified (GM) Bt cotton in the country. Angry farmers urged parliamentarians to hold a special session to discuss the issue and ban the technology. Charging a few seed companies, particularly Monsanto, with monopolising the seed industry and setting the agenda for the government, social activists urged policy-makers and farmers to reject the hype around Bt cotton and demanded a comprehensive review....

To get the Below Poverty Line figures in perspective, we need to closely monitor the numbers driving the Corporate Plunder Line. One Tendulkar makes the big scores. The other wrecks the averages. The Planning Commission clearly prefers Suresh to Sachin. Using Professor Tendulkar's methodology, it declares that there's been another massive fall in poverty. Yes, another (“more dramatic in the rural areas”). “Record Fall in Poverty” reads one headline. The record...

Critics are wrong when they say poverty has not declined. However, they are right, unknowingly though, when they say that the Planning Commission has not been entirely forthcoming about how it arrived at the poverty estimates it put out last week. The commission seems to have quietly tweaked the consumption data for 2009-10 used to estimate poverty. Hence, not only has it undercounted the poor in 2009-10 by some 18 million,...

-The Economic Times World Bank has said it will extend full financial support to India to help enhance the abysmal level of infrastructural development in the country in the 12th Five Year Plan that begins next fiscal.  The World Bank president Robert B Zoellick, who begins his fifth and last official visit to India on Monday, has expressed intent to discuss innovative methods of financing with Indian leaders during his stay.  "India's needs...

-PTI Raking up a new issue, Anna Hazare today demanded that FIRs be registered against 14 "corrupt" Cabinet ministers of the UPA by August failing which a 'jail bharo' agitation will be launched even as he pushed back the deadline for a strong Lokpal law to 2014.  74-year-old Hazare's new plan was declared at a token fast at Jantar Mantar for a strong whistleblowers bill after his close aide Arvind Kejriwal named...