Agriculture
Up above the sky
MORE than two years back, I started writing this column ``Down To Earth'' for Business Line. Except for a period of hospitalisation, I did my best to maintain regularity as also freshness of content. The column was always centered on problems of agricult ure. Since, in my understanding, these problems arise principally out of governmental intervention of market forces, I was required to deal with economic reforms, in general, as also with globalisation. This is the 50th column in the series and as chance would have it, I have been, at this very point, invited by the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to head the Task Force on Agriculture.

Editorial
Luring investments
THE TWO-DAY INTERNATIONAL Rajasthani Conclave (IRC) organised by the State Government, concluded in Jaipur on September 24, with the Chief Minister, Mr Ashok Gehlot, announcing the setting up of a Rajasthan Foundation. The Foundation, with an initial gov ernmental corpus of Rs 2 crore, will keep in touch with non-resident Rajasthanis (NRRs) in a bid to take the State forward. This is one more instance of the winds of change sweeping across India thanks to the growing impact of economic liberalisation, gl obalisation and the information technology (IT) revolution.

Foreign Trade
Trade-off between India and US
Sadly, it appears that the sphere that was most in the limelight -- economic issues -- during Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee's recent visit to the US will, perhaps, benefit the least from the new relationship, not because of any insincerity of effort on both th e sides (particularly the Indian) but because of a basic mismatch of interests of the players concern, says Ranbir Ray Choudhury.

Miscellaneous
Ants-in-pants!
How do organisations gear themselves up to meet the challenges of e-business and e-commerce in an economic and technological environment that is changing (in the words of the Microsoft mogul Mr. Bill Gates) at the speed of thought? The Websites of thinkt anks and transnationals are brimming with offers of `solutions' to enable corporates to survive, surmount, succeed and surpass in the new century which is going to be like no other known to humankind in the past.

Crimes Inc. International
A MORNING newspaper in Bangkok was enough to demonstrate that even if the economies were not fully globalised, crime knew no national frontiers.

Technology
Biocomputers: Mimicking nature
THE current genre of silicon-based computers, made largely of electronic circuits, is now rapidly edging towards the `final frontier' of capability in terms of processing speed, data-storing capability and problem-solving prowess. And computer engineers and researchers, while struggling to go beyond the so-called `van Neumann' barrier, are increasingly borrowing from the natural world to build super-smart computing machines of the future. Clearly, the thrust is on building computers endowed with discrim inative faculties and logical reasoning.

Indo-Russian Vaccine Project -- Focussing on new formulae
IN THE interior Bulandshahr region of Uttar Pradesh is located one of India's finest vaccine production centres, the Bharat Immunological and Biologicals Limited (BIBCOL). It was set up with Russian assistance in 1989, to produce biological products for immunisation.

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