One of the Planning Commission of India’s working groups of agriculture concerns ‘crop husbandry, agricultural inputs, demand and supply projections and agricultural statistics for the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-17)’ which is a lot to expect out of a single committee, howsoever eminent the members and however luminous their output.

Perhaps that is why their observations especially where the use of (and supply of) energy for farming are so, shall we say, unconventional. The equation is that one (cultivating, farm labouring, roti-eating) human’s output is 0.05 kW, a draught animal (cow or bullock) is worth 0.38 kW, a power tiller delivers 5.6 kW and a tractor rules our districts with a lordly 26.1 kW. [You can get the extraordinary numbers here, in this excel file.]

In a short chapter on energy use in Indian farms, the committee has said: “While developed world mechanised its agriculture to create…

Every few months, Hollywood is making yet another push for stronger copyright laws and more restrictive trade agreements. First, there were SOPA, PIPA and ACTA, and now there is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But new data from Ericsson’s (s ERIC) ConsumerLab research unit shows that Hollywood may have gotten it all backwards. The most successful weapon in the fight against piracy aren’t new laws, but better services.

Case in point: Less than 15 percent of U.S.-based online video viewers use file sharing for their movies and TV show fix, according to Ericsson’s TV & Video Consumer Trend Report 2012 (PDF). Netflix (s NFLX) on the other hand is used by around 55 percent. Hulu, websites of TV networks, iTunes (s AAPL) and Amazon’s (s AMZN) VOD offering are also more popular than piracy.

Compare that to Spain, where legal services are still in their infancy: Spanish online…