-The Indian Express At current rates of depletion, Punjab’s entire subsurface water resource could be exhausted in a little over two decades. Jalandhar: As the discussion around Punjab’s massive groundwater crisis becomes more urgent, there is an increasingly stronger accent on diversification of crops, and a move away from water-guzzling paddy. At a meeting over the weekend, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, decided to strengthen maize — the most important alternative to...

-The Hindu Business Line The proposals relating to registration of seed varieties and powers granted to the government to fix prices in some situations need a relook Seed is the primary input of a productive agriculture set-up. No one can deny the fact that the seed industry has been at the centre of the significant advances made in agriculture in the last four decades and will continue to do in the years...

-The Hindu India must use green technologies to boost growth and become a climate leader The UN’s Emissions Gap Report comes as a sharp warning to countries preparing to meet in Madrid in December, under the aegis of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, that every year of inaction is jeopardising the main goal of the Paris Agreement: to keep the rise in global temperature over pre-industrial times well below 2°C,...

-The Hindu Report on congenital deformities in children born to women exposed to the 1984 gas leak is inconclusive, says committee. An expert committee explicitly barred the publication of the findings of a research study that said babies born to women — who as children were exposed to the 1984 gas leak in Bhopal — were significantly more likely to have “congenital malformations” than those born to women unexposed to the gas. The...

-The Indian Express As per the report, Delhi tops the list of 36 states and UTs in the use of electric water purifiers — 36.5 per cent of households in the capital rely on one to treat drinking water. An estimated 12.2 per cent of urban households rely on bottled water for their drinking water needs — up from 2.7 per cent 10 years ago. The finding is part of the...