-Deccan Chronicle Pulses are truly the pulse of life: for the soil, for people and the planet. In our farms they give life to the soil by providing nitrogen. This is how ancient cultures enriched their soils. Farming did not begin with the Green Revolution and synthetic nitrogen fertilisers. Whether it is the diversity-based systems of India, or the three sisters planted by the first nations in North America, or the...

-The Indian Express The odd-even pilot reduced hourly particulate air pollution concentrations by 10-13 per cent. But for the longer run, a congestion-pricing programme may be better Delhi’s ambitious odd-even pilot experiment to reduce the number of cars on the road, and pollution in the air, has come to an end — at least for now. But the question remains: Was it successful? Answering this question is challenging. Air pollution data is...

  A French journalist once wrote: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps the same can be said about nutritional status of children in West Bengal at present in comparison to the past. At the time when Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, was entertaining private capital in Singur and Nandigram, the rate of undernutrition was quite high in his state. A little less than...

-The Hindu For growth to go forward, it must be environmentally and socially concordant. The launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and agreements in Paris finally signalled the realisation that we can no longer achieve our economic ambitions by endangering the environment and society. But even as countries agreed on the need to nurture sustainability, it has come under fire from the mistaken notion that doing so will slow the pace...

-Business Standard Investments in the health sector are far lower than those in the transport and energy sectors Of the 4,000-odd multi-crore infrastructure projects in the country, only nine (0.21%) - with a total investment of Rs 938 crore - are in the health sector, according to data published by the finance ministry. The public-private partnership (PPP) projects range from diagnostic centres to super-specialty hospitals. Investments in the health sector are far lower...