Thursday, 25th July, 2013

NATIONAL NEWS

• AP, West Bengal, Rajasthan may lose out in grain allocation

• Accept expert panel report on GM crops says Forum for GM free india
  • The panel, set up by the Supreme Court in a Public Interest Litigation, has recommended in its final report that it would not be advisable to conduct any field trials in Bt transgenic crops till gaps in regulatory system are addressed.
  • “The report is a strong indictment of the state of regulatory affairs with regard to modern biotechnology in the country. We urge that the Central government to take the report seriously and act on it in the interests of food safety, security, and sovereignty as well as protection of environment and farm livelihoods
  • However, the Association of Biotech Led Enterprise - Agriculture Group (ABLE AG) that represents the industry has termed the document — though an improvement over the interim report that called for a 10-year moratorium on field trials of Bt transgenic in all food crops (those used directly for human consumption) — as “regressive and a troubled treatise” that promises to push Indian agriculture into an archaic age.
  • “The industry believes the TEC report, besides being incomplete, is also anti-science and anti-research and will severely dent the future of country's farmers besides destroying the domestic private and public sector research. While improving the testing programmes is a continuous process, we do not believe that testing should be stopped in the interim
  • The TEC could not find any compelling reason for India to be the first country, where Bt transgenics are widely consumed in large amounts for any major food crop that is directly used for human consumption.

• In the wake of Depsang India and China look to enhance CBM's
  • India and China are considering augmenting the existing confidence-building measures in a bid to ensure that incidents like April’s three-week standoff in Ladakh’s Depsang Valley do not recur. Officials attending the third meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs discussed the possibility of holding flag meetings between non-Army border forces — mainly the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and its Chinese counterparts.
  • Though Chinese and Indian troops went back to other original bases and not a shot was fired, the Working Mechanism felt such incidents ought to be eliminated altogether. In this respect, they decided to consider the proposal of involving the auxiliary forces in flag meetings that are till now held between the Indian Army and the People’s Liberation Army. Discussions touched on copying the India-Pakistan mechanism — flag meetings are held between the Border Security Force and Pakistan Rangers.

OPINION/EDITORIALS

• Article on India – The unempowered Asian country
• Article on Pakistan's Abbotabad incident
• Article on CIC's latest verdict on political parties
• Editorial on the planning commission's latest poverty stats
• Editorial on Israel – Palestine issue