-United Nations Food markets are more stable and prices for most agricultural commodities are sharply lower than they have been in recent years, according to the latest edition of the biannual Food Outlook report released today by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). According to a statement released by the Rome-based FAO, bumper harvests and abundant stockpiles are key factors helping drive down international food prices. World wheat production in 2014...
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The Dirty Truth about Sanitation -TR Raghunandan
-Accountability Initiative/ RaghuBytes Unless you have a blocked nose, I strongly suggest that you do not drive from Bhubaneshwar the capital of Orissa, to Kandamahal, a remote tribal district, particularly in the evenings. At twilight, when you begin to wind into the interior, you are greeted with the sight of the behinds of the entire population squatting on the roadside, faces turned away and shitting. We quickly wound up the windows...
More »PM Narendra Modi's ‘Swachh Bharat’ initiative: It’ll take more than brooms on ground to clean India -Subodh Varma
-The Times of India With the Prime Minister himself taking up the broom along with his cabinet colleagues, BJP cadres and lakhs of government employees, the Swachh Bharat (Clean India) campaign got off to an energetic start on Thursday. But a look at the jaw-dropping dimensions of the problem makes one wonder whether Modi really has a chance to meet his target to clean up India by 2019? Here are some sobering...
More »New buildings keep guzzling, small steps at home giant leap for energy saving -Amitabh Sinha
-The Indian Express All the extra money that you spent on installing CFL lights in your homes, in buying new LED television sets, and on five-star rated air-conditioners and refrigerators instead of three-star ones, have proved to be worthwhile, having resulted in huge energy savings for India in the last decade. Between 2000 and 2011, a total of 791 million tonnes of oil equivalent energy was saved, thanks to measures like...
More »Bring back exams, more weight on learning, teachers -P Vaidyanathan Iyer
-The Indian Express The Rajasthan government is planning two significant amendments to the Right to Education (RTE) Act: reintroducing exams in at least three classes from Class I to 8, and giving more weightage to "learning outcomes" than to physical infrastructure of schools while deciding on their recognition or registration. A senior Rajasthan government official told The Indian Express that during Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje's "sarkar apke dwar" programme, parents suggested that...
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