-The Statesman The ongoing flood situation in several parts of peninsular India has left people confused. Just a few months ago, the states were declared drought-hit with a severe drinking water crisis. Yet, images of the 2015 floods in Chennai are still fresh in one’s memory. Reports of the recent floods in Bangalore and Mumbai poured in even as the region was declared to be facing the worst drought in recorded...

-The Financial Express For most consumers, ‘organic’ is probably a code for ‘safe’ or ‘residue-free’, not necessarily produce grown without chemical fertilisers and pesticides. But marketers use the tag to tap into a seam of fear in some urban parents who are so anxious about health that they are willing to pay for advertising that spells ‘well-being’. A brand of ‘organic’ jaggery, for example, on the shelves of Reliance Fresh stores...

The phenomenal growth in foodgrain production witnessed in the 2016-17 crop year will not repeat this year. Early prediction by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare shows that the kharif foodgrain production in 2017-18 may likely to fall by 2.8 percent as compared that in the previous year. The kharif foodgrain production is expected to decline from 138.5 million tonnes in 2016-17 to 134.7 million tonnes in 2017-18. Readers...

-CivilSocietyOnline.com At a recent interaction with a large group of colleagues in a regional meeting, one relatively junior member who visits schools daily as part of his training schedule was very disturbed with his experiences in a school. He did not like the way teachers were treated by senior functionaries when they visited the school. The functionaries did not empathise with several situations that the teachers faced in the school —...

-The Economic Times Balasaheb Ghadge, who works as a clerk in the village panchayat in the tribal belt of Andar Maval in Maharashtra and also runs a small kirana store, was a staunch supporter of demonetisation when it was announced. A year on, he is worried that poor farmers continue to suffer from the government’s move. “At the national level, the decision must have yielded results, but for us, life has...