-The Hindu The debate on the pros and cons of genetically engineered/modified crops is universal. In India, in the face of vociferous protests, the controversy has only deepened leading to a moratorium on cultivation of Bt Brinjal crop — the first GM food crop sought to be commercialised. Gargi Parsai spoke to Basudeb Acharia, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, on its new report, “Cultivation of Genetically Modified Food...

-The HIndustan Times The images bore an uncanny resemblance to Partition snap-shots. Trains packed with people barely able to find standing room, ferrying refugees in their own land.  Even the overflowing toilets were choc-a-bloc with panicky residents of the North-East. Everyone fleeing an unknown enemy, everyone desperate to get back to the security of their own homes. Two trains from Bengaluru chugged into Howrah station on Friday carrying thousands of passengers en route...

-The Business Standard No movement yet on quality control in higher education The state of professional higher education in India is abysmal. Consider Engineering. All told, there are 1.5 million Engineering seats in the country. Almost a third of these are unfilled, so about a million engineers are produced every year. Yet, barely 10 per cent of them are readily employable. About a quarter don’t know enough English to make sense...

-The Hindu Public Interest Litigation is a good thing when it is used to enforce the rights of the disadvantaged. But it has now been diluted to interfere with the power of the government to take decisions on a range of policy matters Judicial activism is not an easy concept to define. It means different things to different persons. Critics denounce judicial decisions as activist when they do not agree with them....

-The Economic Times With a weak monsoon, farmers and farm labour, agri-investors and policy makers, everyone is looking up in the sky and praying for more water to pour. Farm analysts are debating whether this will lead to a drop of 16 million tonnes of foodgrain, as it happened in 2009, or 38 million tonnes, as it did in 2002. NCAER is projecting 20 million tonnes drop in grain production in...