The loan waiver will lighten the debt burden of the farmers. But in the long term this will adversely affect the rural credit institutions that extend loans to farmers. A discussion of the likely fallout.

The world food summit in Rome failed to even recognise the basic problem, let alone remedy it. (Editorial)

The capacity of countries to take advantage of the patent system bears a relationship with their stage of development. This paper explores the relationship between economic development and domestic and foreign patenting behaviour. The study uses a unique data set covering 55 countries and 24 years. It determines the association of domestic patenting with gross domestic product per capita and openness to trade, and the association of foreign patenting with these variables and with foreign direct investment as a proportion of gdp.

Decentralisation of power and the institution of the panchayati raj system in West Bengal have been expected to aid the disappearance of subalternity (or a state of powerlessness) by way of caste, class and gender. On the contrary, an ethnographic investigation in a village panchayat reveals that divisions between the elite and the subaltern continue to exist in a complex form despite grassroots democracy in the state.

Indigenous institutions have positive capabilities in natural resource management which have to be considered along with the negative aspects of tradition and prejudice. A context specific assessment of the powers to be given to such institutions must therefore be done.

The Common Guidelines for Watershed Development Projects, brought out by the union government, is an adapted version of the Parthasarathy Committee Report. This article highlights some of the major features of the guidelines and discusses ways to take forward the main concerns that have engaged much of the recent policy discourse on watershed development.

Environment impact assessment was supposed to be a critical tool in environmental decision-making. But it has been re-engineered to severely reduce its usefulness as an instrument for public participation in decision-making.

This paper looks at how Nike's soccer ball suppliers (previous and current) in Sialkot (Pakistan) fare in relation to the company's code of ethics. While minimum required working conditions are implemented, the criteria for social and environmental compliance are not met with. The multinational's decision to withdraw orders from the previous supplier ostensibly due to allegations of child labour and unauthorised subcontracting hit large sections of the workforce, especially rural, low-skilled and female workers.

The decline of the political significance of industrial conflicts is not quite a result of the structural changes in management-labour relations (as commonly thought) in these times of globalisation. It is more a consequence of the lack of an appropriate agency and politics among the working classes, despite their increasing incompatibilities with globalising capitalism. A set of case studies of manufacturing industries in Bangalore illustrates this point.

This is apropos "Savage War for