The State government of the day spares no occasion to make a mention of the “shambles” the 34 years of Left rule has left West Bengal in. The Economic Review presented in the State Legislative Assembly, however, tells a different story. It highlights several areas where the State's performance has been “impressive over the last few years”. Mention is made of progress in agriculture, industry, rural development, industrial relations and rising...

Travelling in rural India always yields rich insights into how poor women struggle to provide that little extra, in terms of food, for the family meal. It was in the village of Vijaypura – in the drought prone Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh – that I came across Bharati, a 39-year-old farm woman and homemaker, working her everyday magic by laying out slices of Potato and whole green chillies on the...

India's decision this month to produce Germany-based multinational Bayer's anti-cancer drug Nexavar, in the first use of "compulsory licensing" in South Asia, will save lives but also raises intricate questions. Under the compulsory licensing process, a government can under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules bypass a patent owner's rights after three years and order the manufacture and sale of life-saving medicines at much cheaper cost than by obtaining the medicine from...

The second green revolution found a mention in the Union Budget as a big achievement for the government. But, while paddy production went up manifold in eastern India, did it help its producers? In Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s home state of West Bengal, there was agony everywhere in the last few months, as paddy and Potatoes were selling cheap and pauperised cultivators were killing themselves. The government was nowhere to procure...

-IANS Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's dream of India's second green revolution taking off from Bihar seems to be coming closer to reality. A young farmer of Darveshpura village in his native Nalanda district has set what is claimed to be a world record in Potato production through organic farming.  Three months ago, a group of farmers in the same village had created a "world record" producing 224 quintals of paddy per hectare...