-Down to Earth * Day-long Conclave organised by CSE in New Delhi; about 50 experts from across India participate * Experts recogniselinkages between India’s growing burden of diseases and the food produced intensively using chemicals as well as ‘bad food’ — ultra-processed foods high in fats, sugar or salt (HFSS), marketed rampantly * Strong pesticide management billneeded. Class I pesticides, extremely hazardous and toxic, must be phased out * Regulations needed to reduce misuse...

-The Indian Express The march is set to end on February 27 at the state Legislative Assembly in Mumbai, when the Budget Session would be in progress. Nashik: Tribals, landless agriculturalists and small farmers converged in Nashik on Wednesday for their second “long march” to Mumbai since March last year. In small contingents, they arrived from places like Peint, Trimbakeshwar, Kalwan, Palghar and adjoining areas, getting off their dust-covered vehicles 8 to...

-The Indian Express Interim budget does little to tackle unemployment, poverty. And it is clear that the government’s figures cannot be trusted. Last month, I was part of an all-party delegation of MPs from Karnataka, led by a Union cabinet minister, who met the Union rural development minister. We requested him to release the MGNREGA funds overdue to Karnataka. We pleaded that the poorest of the poor, who turn to MGNREGA...

-Livemint.com Given the over-optimistic revenue estimates and under-budgeted expenditure, the FinMin’s budget projections should be taken with a pinch of salt Dark clouds are gathering over the fiscal horizon. Finance minister Arun Jaitley will table an interim budget on 1 February—just weeks before India goes to polls. There’s a growing consensus among analysts that the government will miss its revenue target for the year, largely because the collections from the goods and services...

-The Economic Times To observers outside Kerala, Sabarimala is all about misogyny, a misguided mass construing one strand of anti-woman tradition as a pillar of faith. But to those in Kerala, it is increasingly clear that resurgence of caste marks the Sabarimala protests, gender injustice being one element subsumed in that assertion of caste. At the beginning of the 20th century, Kerala’s caste system practised unapproachability. Even proximity could pollute. The Nair...