For generations of China watchers, Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea was an objective interpreter of the tumultuous events which unfolded in the Peoples’ Republic.  Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea was one of the world’s leading scholars on China, a political scientist who skirted the minefield that her subject’s often fraught relations with India laid before her peers with integrity, wit and an objectivity of consideration rare in the field of Sinology. Taking to academia at...

The G8 countries have promised to increase the spending on agricultural development by $20 billion over the next three years. The amount is woefully less than the $44 billion that will be needed each year to end malnutrition.  At the world leaders’ meeting in Copenhagen, it is imperative that governments pledge to adopt up-to-date technologies to boost food production as well as outweigh the negative impacts of climate change. A...

The road to Khardung La begins in the Indian town of Leh on the northwestern fringe of the Himalayas. Exhaust-spewing army trucks rattle up the side of dry rock, past Buddhist monasteries clinging to the craggy mountainside and alongside small farms barely scraping fertility from the earth. Khardung La, the highest motorable mountain pass in the world, is more than 18,000 ft. above sea level, the air so thin that...

Transgenic Cotton being hastily pushed in India, says researcher Technological alternatives available to switch from conventional production NEW DELHI: A panel discussion on ‘GM Foods and Food Security’ held here on Thursday highlighted differing opinions on the controversial subject, although the majority opinion was in favour of GM crops. Participating in the discussion, organised by the Institute of Economic Growth, Ronald Herring of Cornell University pointed out that Bt Cotton in India played an...

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...