-The Economic Times Ashok Gulati, chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, warns that India will have a record food grain stock of 75 million tonnes by June when wheat procurement for the year would be over. A third of it would be stored in the open, and vulnerable to damage from rain, as covered storage capacity is only 50 million tonnes. If these stocks are not run down...

The same full page appeared twice in three years, the first time as news, the second time as an advertisement “Not a single person from the two villages has committed suicide.” Three and a half years ago, at a time when the controversy over the use of genetically modified seeds was raging across India, a newspaper story painted a heartening picture of the technology's success. “There are no suicides here and people...

Alarmed by its proactive role, the three ‘pillars’ of our democracy set out to weaken the fourth estate Fundamentalisms do not necessarily announce their arrival by banging a hammer on our heads. Freedoms are often lost in little steps. The process creeps in quietly but insidiously. The path is often complex and defies a simple narrative. But here’s a straightforward fact: a concerted attempt is being made to censor, control...

Ignoring widespread concern over the safety, efficacy and cost of pentavalent vaccines, India’s central health ministry has, this month, approved inclusion of the prophylactic cocktail in the universal immunisation programme in seven of its provinces. Pentavalent vaccine doses, a cocktail of five antigens in a single shot, confers immunity against five paediatric diseases - diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenza type b (Hib), with the last one considered particularly...

-The Economic Times India will have a normal monsoon this year, says the Met office. This is good news, even though the forecast does not rule out some slack during the second half of the season. What matters finally is the distribution of rainfall across space and time rather than the aggregate percentages. However, a good monsoon is only one side of the story to have a strong farm sector. Reforms are...