-The Hindu A promising area of change for the better In the last article, we considered the climate impact of India’s love for milk (short summary: not good). This time we will consider another aspect of our food: how we cook it. Most readers of this newspaper will perhaps not have more than the slightest acquaintance with wood-fired stoves. Most of us are still wondering whether or not to voluntarily give up...

-IANS CHANDIGARH: They have been warned, threatened with prosecution and even offered inducements. But a number of farmers in Punjab and Haryana seem disinclined to stop their environment-unfriendly bi-annual exercise of burning crop residue, cited by environmentalists as one of the prinicipal causes of dust haze and air Pollution in Delhi and northern India. With the wheat harvest in both the states nearly over, authorities are attempting in whatever they can to...

-Hindustan Times Ludhiana: Like every year, the farmers in the district have started burning stubble despite ban on such a practice. The agricultural experts and officials have been appealing to the farmers to avoid this practice but the farmers seem to be least concerned about it. Stubble burning can be noticed round the clock at every rural pocket of the district. According to the experts, it not only depletes the soil health but...

-India Today Already grappling with the Ganga cleaning project, the government seems to have a bigger problem at hand as the groundwater in more than half of the country's districts is contaminated with poisonous substances. The Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) has come up with a shocking assessment, according to which 276 districts have high levels of fluorides in their groundwater. At least 387 districts in 21 states, of the 676 districts...

-The Hindu Gajendra Singh Rajput from Dausa. Hargovind Harane from Vidarbha . Gosai Patra from Bardhaman. Why did these farmers take their own lives? In the light of the burning issue of farmer suicides across the country, A.R. Vasavi looks at the plight of the marginalised cultivator. Basamma and her ailing husband have carried and spread their five sacks of ragi (finger millet) from their half-acre plot to the local tar road...