P.V. Satheesh, founder and Executive Director of the Deccan Development Society passed away on 19 March, 2023. Periyapatna Venkatasubbaiah Satheesh – P.V. Satheesh to friends – was born in Mysore in 1945. He studied mass communication and television production at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication and the Film and Television Institute of India. He joined Doordarshan as a senior producer and worked on programming related to rural development and...

-The Telegraph Radhakamal Mukerjee: an ecological pioneer In 1922, a professor at Lucknow University named Radhakamal Mukerjee published a book called Principles of Comparative Economics. Reading the book one hundred years later, I was struck by the attention it paid to the impact of the natural environment on the social and economic life of Indian villages. Mukerjee was perhaps the first Indian scholar to recognise the vital importance of common property resources...

-The Telegraph Over two dozen petitions have challenged the legal and constitutional validity of DeMo A five-judge constitution bench headed by Justice Abdul Nazeer will on Wednesday start hearing a batch of petitions challenging the Narendra Modi government’s demonetisation of high-value currency notes in November 2016. Over two dozen petitions have challenged the legal and constitutional validity of the demonetisation and the short window offered to citizens to exchange the demonetised notes. A three-judge...

-The Hindu Frontline The story of Manuguru in eastern Telangana tells us how this sleight of hand is worked. Manuguru, a small town in eastern Telangana, set a record in April 2022 collecting Rs.1.59 crore in property taxes. It even made it to the list of top performing municipalities in the State by achieving more than 95 per cent of its annual property tax collection target. However, the fact is that Manuguru,...

-IndiaSpend.com/ Scroll.in PepsiCo has appealed in the Delhi High Court against the revocation of its registration of a potato variety. An ongoing court case between multinational food and beverage company PepsiCo India and the petitioner, farmers’ rights activist Kavitha Kuruganti, has highlighted the tensions between plant-breeding corporations which want a stricter intellectual Property Rights regime and farmers’ rights in developing countries. International intellectual Property Rights conventions seek to give plant variety breeders the...