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Bharti asked to submit Walmart deal details by Mrs Sonia Gandhi	Oakland Institute Report
US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, rushing to India to ensure its full cooperation in revival of Doha WTO talks	More News
Indian Bankers Upbeat : - ICICI chief K.V.Kamath said... " After all, there is a lot of money to be made from rural areas ".	Indian Farmers Suicidal : - Mohan Dharia Farm Debt Campaign
ASEAN leaders want Europe style bloc : - ASEAN group leaders have signed a commitment to create ASEAN's first-ever charter, aimed at turning the bloc, into a European Union style trading bloc, with binding rules and regulations.	Indian Leaders Speeding ASEAN FTA : - India planning to sign Free Trade Agreement by July 2007
UP Farmers Commit Suicides : - Reports have started coming in of UP farmers committing suicides due to debt burden and recovery of revenue.	Tesco Steps Out in China : - After increasing its stake to 90% in Chinese food retail joint venture Ting Hsin, Tesco, has now quietly opened its first direct branded store in Beijing. In coming years, Chinese and Indian food retail markets, are expected to fuel the real corporate growth of Tesco
Trade ministers signal revival of Doha talks at WEF, Davos. This follows hectic efforts by WTO Chairman, the ex EU Trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy	More News

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Facing Goliath : Challenging the Impacts of Retail Consolidation on our Local Economies, Communities, and Food Security is a publication of the Oakland Institute, a think tank for research, analysis, and action whose mission is to increase public participation and promote fair debate on critical social, economic, and environmental justice issues. Read more in Reports and Retail section.

* Monday, 22 January 2007 * : In this week's article from food policy analyst Devinder Sharma, he writes: "Farm income over the years has eroded. Let us accept that like everyone else, farmer too needs an adequate monthly take-home package that takes care of his family needs and leaves him with a little surplus to sow the next crop "
In this new article, "Reviving Agriculture - Farmers Need An Income Commission" Devinder Sharma writes, "Green revolution has not only gone sour, it has collapsed. The unexplained number of massive farmer suicides is a testimony to the entire equation going wrong. However, the fundamental issue of destruction of sustainable livelihoods is not at all being addressed."
Read more in Today's Article section.
Come back every Monday for the latest from Devinder Sharma's desk...

Some Quotes :
"As representative of the government, I know better than the papers. Suppose I purchase wheat from Punjab and Haryana and if I have to sell it to the entire South India, my yearly storage charges and my transport charges alone cost me Rs 1,150 to Rs 1,160 per quintal.
My import price from Australia in southern India is somewhat close to Rs 950.
It is my responsibility to protect the interests of the consumer, and for the sake of protecting the interests, I have to build up my buffer stock, and essentially in southern India. For the sake of building the buffer stock, in the case of an eventuality, I have no choice, I will import from anywhere. - Shri Sharad Pawar, Indian Minister for Agriculture

Indian Vital Statistics : Fatal Figures

* Hardly 10 per cent of Indian farmers are covered by crop insurance. * Debt drove nearly 1 lakh members of farming community to commit suicide between 1998 and 2003, says a government report. * 17,000 farmers and their kin killed themselves each year for six years. * 12% of all suicides in the country was in the farming community. * 2002 worst year. 16% of suicides among farmers. * Agriculture provides nearly 600 million direct and another 200 million indirect jobs. * The total annual rural debt of Punjab was Rs 24,000 crore in 2003-04 -- is more than its gross annual earnings from agriculture. (Source: The Telegraph, April 24, 2006) * There is a total of about 455 million acres of land that is cultivated in India and only about a third of it is covered by irrigation. * The four states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Kerala have recorded over 8,900 suicides between 2001-2002 and 2005-2006. * 70% of the Andhra's 78 million people are dependent on agriculture. * Due to the acute distress, more than 1500 farmers committed suicide, mainly in Wayanad district, which is unprecedented in the history of Kerala. * Rural development expenditure as percentage of GDP between 1985-1990 was 14.5%, which came down to 5.9% in 2000-01. * The expenditure on agriculture research is only around 0.3 per cent of GDP.

LokVidya News :

Africa's Wealth of Seed Diversity and Farmer Knowledge - Under threat from the Gates/ Rockefeller "Green Revolution" initiative : Statement from African civil society organisations at the World Social Forum 2007

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Welcome to the premier Indian Food Policy website. The Indian Food Policy web site, is a platform for discussion of issues related to South East Asian food, agriculture and trade policy. Every sixth human being on the planet resides in India. We believe democratic food policy is meaningless rhetoric without listening to the views of the Indian farmer.

Global institutions, multi lateral institutions, specialist First World food policy research institutes that try to coerce and drum up global concurrence without ascertaining the views of the Indian farmers vis a vis global food policies can never be remotely democratic. Maybe their very mandate is explicitly undemocratic.

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This Once a Month newsletter provides access to Web Seminar based analysis and discussions, inviting analysts to argue South Asian food trade, food safety, food security, the politics of hunger, patenting and bio technology policy issues from non corporate or trade bloc perspectives. The website seeks to examine the inextricable link between biotechnology, intellectual property rights, food trade, aid and poverty. The website welcomes contributions from policy analysts, bureaucrats, campaigners, politicians, academics, activists and farmers from any of the South East Asian countries.

We believe that transparency in food policy issues is of vital importance to the economies of south Asian countries and the well being of the population. What Indians eat cannot and must not be decided in closed secretive rooms or from other continents.

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As per Wikipedia, policy is defined as " a plan of action to guide decisions and actions. The term may apply to government, private sector organizations and groups, and individuals. The policy process includes the identification of different alternatives, such as programs or spending priorities, and choosing among them on the basis of the impact they will have. Policies in short, can be understood as political, management, financial, and administrative mechanisms arranged to reach explicit goals.

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"For millions of India's farmers, it is a question of subsistence, not a subsidy. And subsistence can never be put on the table for negotiation. Subsidies should be discussed and negotiated and even phased out, but not when it involves the basic survival of the farming communities."
- Kamal Nath, Indian, Commerce Minister