-The Hindustan Times The smog that nearly choked Delhi in November was caused due to the burning of post-harvest rice stalks in Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh. Every year, rice is harvested using combine harvesters, which leaves a residue in the field. Earlier, Harvesting was done by hand and the people who worked on the fields would take out the stalks and use them as food for animals. This practice is...

-The Economic Times The government should liquidate wheat stocks through exports and sales in the open market and share the proceeds with farmers to raise their income levels, a government panel suggested. In its latest report to the agriculture ministry, the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), which recommends a minimum support price (MSP) for agriculture crops, is said to have maintained that there is no reason to lift the...

-The Times of India How can a right given under one Act be a criminal offence under another, members of a Parliamentary standing committee have asked officials from the Union environment ministry, raising concern about conflict between the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, and the Indian Forest Act (IFA), 1927. The House panel on science and technology and environment and forests headed by T Subbarami Reddy of Congress was gathering evidence on...

-The Hindu Kerala’s Kudumbashree network and the rural employment guarantee scheme have converged to provide a unique model of empowerment An incredible story of empowerment has been unfolding in the wake of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) programme in the State of Kerala. This is the story of how a socially engineered convergence of the scheme with panchayati raj institutions and the State sponsored community network of poor...

-The Times of India CHANDIGARH: As Nasa satellite images over the past few days show, Punjab is literally on fire. In the images, the state is pockmarked with red dots which correspond to blazes deliberately lit by farmers to get rid of their paddy stubbles after harvest. It's an environmentally disastrous practice that the state government has shown little urgency in tackling. Among the fallout of this mass-burning is smog that spreads...