Much has been made in the media of the apparent contradiction between what United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently said about development and environmental concerns.

More testing has to be done on the new variety of brinjal and on any vegetable that may be in the process of being genetically modified.OVER three decades ago I was asked, as were other District Magistrates and Deputy Commissioners in the country, to help the agricultural officers in our districts to promote two new varieties of rice, which were called High Yielding Varieties, or HYV, among farmer

WHILE a good many people in the country know that the Central and State governments have a number of plans and projects to bring about development

The time has come to act fast to replace, over a reasonable period of time, our dependence on imported crude oil. M. PERIASAMY Jatropha, a plant that can be used to produce bio-diesel, is cultivated on the Karunya University campus in Coimbatore. A file picture.