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Industrialisation as if people mattered The viewpoint rapidly gaining ground in India is that labour must inevitably transfer from agriculture to industry and services, as happened in the now developed countries. But there are three strong reasons why a replication of these processes in an Indian setting is unlikely, even impossible More... Industrialisation or environmental colonialism?Forty-five steel plants are on the anvil in the small state of Orissa alone. Thousands of acres of land are being taken over. The people of Orissa have not asked for this industrialisation. In fact, they are opposing it. So who is the break-neck industrialisation in the state for? More... GM or organic: Where does India's future lie?Does it make sense for India to forego its special status as a producer of GM-free agricultural foods, lose a secure market for its produce and incomes for its farmers, and start cultivating GM crops that no one will buy? Is the future not with organic farming? More... Green, Gene and Evergreen Revolutions: Interesting wordplayBy successfully morphing the popular Green Revolution with the Gene Revolution, proponents of agricultural biotechnology appear to indicate that the latter will bring in all the benefits of the former, and in perpetuity. But there are glaring differences between the two so-called 'revolutions' More... Herbicide-tolerant plants: Not in India, please!Herbicide-tolerant crops contain a gene that makes them resistant to the herbicide that is sprayed to kill herbs and weeds. The herbicide-tolerance trait is essentially labour-saving and will have economic implications were it to be introduced in labour-surplus developing countries like India More... Bt cotton: What's the fuss about?Bt cotton is unlikely to work for more than a few years in India because it is fundamentally at odds with the agricultural and climatic conditions here More... How a genetically-engineered plant is madeIn the first of a fortnightly series that demystifies genetic engineering and its impact on the environment and health, Suman Sahai explains the cut-and-paste processes that go into making a transgenic plant More... Retail blitzkriegA US study has established increasing poverty in states where Wal-Mart has expanded operations. But in India, not a single independent study has examined the impact of organised retail on 12 million small shopkeepers, 40 million hawkers and 200 million small farmers More... Are supply-side solutions to water access sufficient?While overall access to water supply infrastructure in cities is increasing, coverage remains uneven. But are dams and so-called "flexible water allocations", as advocated by the World Bank, the answer? More... SEZs: A catalogue of questionsCan a few "treasure islands" take shelter from the nation's Constitution in the guise of economic growth? More... East India Company: Mother of the modern-day corporationThe East India Company outstripped Wal-Mart in market power, Enron in corruption, and Union Carbide in human devastation. The success of two Armenian merchants in bringing the Company to book in 1769 for corporate malpractice should inspire us to hold corporations to account More... The limits of judicial activismToday, everything from river pollution to the selection of the cricket team has become the purview of judicial activism. Is it time to put the genie back in the bottle and confine the courts' public interest jurisdiction to its original purpose of ensuring justice to the poor and exploited? More... Are GMOs spiralling out of control?To argue that genetically-modified crops will solve the problem of hunger thanks to their higher productivity, is like saying that Bill Gates developed Microsoft software to solve the world's illiteracy problem. And what if the technology runs amuck? More... Recipes for making India 'hunger-free'A roadmap prepared by the National Commission on Farmers, chaired by M S Swaminathan, insists that only a Rs 39,500-crore subsidy for a universal public distribution system can solve the food security problem. Is this practicable? More... |
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