Complexity and unsolved problems are at the very heart of the sustainability challenge, and at the very heart of M.S. Swaminathan's thinking and essays. In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus offered the piercing insight that geometric population growth would inevitably outstrip food production, leaving society destitute and hungry. Since that time, our optimism of beating the “Malthusian curse” has waxed and waned. Few people in modern history have done more to help...

As agriculture universities transform local varieties into genetically modified Bt brinjal, questions of ownership arise. Indians call it the brinjal. Other countries know it as the eggplant or aubergine. It is widely used the world over and every cuisine from the Chinese to the African has an encyclopaedia of recipes that establishes its popularity as a vegetable of daily use. And no vegetable has hogged the headlines as much as the...

HAS GREEN REVOLUTION FAILED INDIA'S POOR? Green Revolution Vs Rain-fed Farming OVERVIEW: Of late India’s fabled Green Revolution has come under severe attack. Many development thinkers believe that it has unfairly skewed India’s agriculture policy in favour of the farmers whose land is already or potentially covered under irrigation. The basic criticism is that the Green Revolution has been largely irrelevant for India’s 60 per cent cultivable land which is un-irrigated. These...

Indian-American human rights activist Mallika Dutt has won the American Courage Award for her work in the U.S. and India. The 47-year-old, who grew up in Kolkata and left for the U.S. at the age of 18, will receive the award on October 1 from the Asian American Justice Center, a leading civil rights organisation. In 1989, Ms. Dutt co-founded ‘Sakhi,’ an organisation that helped south Asian women suffering domestic violence in...