-IPS News MALKANGIRI (Odisha)- Scattered across 31 remote hilltop villages on a mountain range that towers 1,500 to 4,000 feet above sea level, in the Malkangiri district of India's eastern Odisha state, the Upper Bonda people are considered one of this country's most ancient tribes, having barely altered their lifestyle in over a thousand years. Resistant to contact with the outside world and fiercely skeptical of modern development, this community of under...

-The Economic Times None of the standard explanations quite explain the rise in food prices India has seen: pronounced since 2006 and alarming after 2010. Drought and poor rains? The country has seen good aggregate rainfall in most of those years. Spike in global prices? Those were high in 2007-08, not now. Fragmented value chains that allow middlemen to grab large margins? The value chain has always been fragmented. Growth has slowed...

-The Business Standard Monsoon revival saves standing crop but fails to fill drinking water wells, triggering acute shortage in some areas Jhunjhunu/Nawalgarh: Just opposite the highway leading to the Jhunjhunu district headquarters lies the hamlet of Pratappura. It is indistinguishable from the thousands of small dwellings that dot the countryside, but for the chasm between the upper and lower castes in this Jat-dominated area. The divide has widened after the sole source...

-The Business Standard A delayed monsoon and abundant cotton in the international market could spell trouble in the state's suicide zone Yavatmal (Maharashtra): As the skies stayed clear till the second week of June, Ramesh Gulabhrao Digde's mood darkened. His two acres were ploughed at great expense, the seeds were purchased, and a sack of fertilisers lay in a corner of his thatch-roofed hut in Parsodi village in western Maharashtra's Yavatmal...

-The Asian Age Three common arguments are advanced to the citizens of India as justifying the need for genetically modified crops. None of these owe their intellectual genesis to the present NDA government (which is employing them nonetheless), and can be found as theses in both UPA2 and UPA1. They are: Genetically engineered seed and crop are necessary in order that India find lasting food security; that good science and particularly...