-TheWire.in Agriculture in the state needs a new paradigm, one that acknowledges the scarcity of interlinked resources and the costs of their use. Recently, experts from Punjab Agricultural University advised farmers in the state to reduce the area taken up by the cultivation of basmati, predicting a crash in basmati prices due to huge carryover stock. Last year, the state produced 18 million tonnes of paddy and contributed a record 9.4 million...

-The Hindu To develop genes that can be integrated into traditional varieties for larger outputs The Union government is working to develop a suite of Bt cotton genes that can be integrated into traditional varieties and be made available to farmers as a viable alternative to the current technology, which is largely sourced from Mahyco Monsanto Biotech India Ltd. (MMB). The Indian Council of Agricultural Research has for many years unsuccessfully tried to...

-Livemint.com New Delhi: Back from a walk through drought-affected parts of the country, Yogendra Yadav, political scientist and co-founder of non-profit Swaraj Abhiyan, speaks on state compliance of Supreme Court orders, a booming private water market in Marathwada, and why farmer movements are weakest at a time when agrarian distress is at its peak. Edited excerpts from an interview: * You just came back from a trip to Bundelkhand and Marathwada. What...

-The Hindu ‘Groundwater will not be a free resource’   New Delhi: The government has for the first time said that citizens had a right to safe water and laid out stringent rules on how corporations and large entities can extract groundwater in two separate pieces of draft legislation uploaded on the website of the Union Water Ministry and open for public comment. The Bills —in a first — also propose fines ranging from...

-CivilSocietyOnline.com For the past decade state governments have launched a series of Internet-based initiatives to deliver services more efficiently. Technology has been seen as the best way of bypassing red tape and corruption in the system to reach the poor directly with benefits. Beneficiaries are identified through biometrics and a series of tech solutions like smart cards, micro ATMs and so on. The result of these efforts is that India is...