-The Hindustan Times   The government is planning a "grow safe food campaign" that could entail new policy initiatives on pesticide use and an awareness drive among farmers in the wake of a study that shows at least 2% of commonly consumed fruits and vegetables could be poisonous. The government-sponsored study, ‘Monitoring of Pesticide Residues at National Level', continuously tracked pesticide use between April 2009 and March 2013 for possible presence of organo-chlorine,...

-The Hindu Jalna (Maharashtra): An angry silence greets one on entering the village of Dhasalgaon in Jalna district. Perpetuating agrarian crises for the last three years have made the once-proud farmers of this village poor. Despite the newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party government's announcement that it seek a Rs. 4,500-crore package from the Centre, farmers in Jalna have wearied of the lip service that Mumbai's mandarins have been paying them for the...

-The Hindu The clean-up of the plant is pending due to legal disputes Thirty years after India's worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, contamination owing to the leakage of poisonous gas from the Union Carbide pesticide factory continues to affect residents. The leak of 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate on the intervening night of December 2 and 3, 1984, killed thousands of people in its immediate aftermath and continued to kill people in the...

-The Telegraph Differences with the Prime Minister's Office appear to have held up key schemes of the women and child development (WCD) ministry announced in the budget five months ago. Among the MEAsures stalled is the "one-stop rape crisis centres", christened Nirbhaya centres after the 2012 Delhi bus rape victim and seen as a pet project of Maneka Gandhi. The finance ministry had approved Rs 500 crore for the plan but, with the...

Far from being dead and gone, slavery exists in many forms and is flourishing. A disturbing report on modern slavery compiles facts and figures and documents data about new forms of slavery all over the world. Even more disturbing is the fact that India figures in very high on slavery index. It says that almost 61% of those living in modern slavery are in 5 countries: India, China, Pakistan, Uzbekistan...