-The Hindu How Zero Budget Natural Farming could be the model for the future In early June, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu announced that the State would fully embrace Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), a chemical-free method that would cover all farmers by 2024. Earlier in the year, he had revealed these plans at the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Even though this revolution has been in the...

-The Indian Express Experts say the reluctance of Indian men to undergo sterilisation stems from history, social taboo and sheer logistical limitations. New Delhi: A National Health Mission report released Monday has flagged the “uneven burden” women bear in family planning with latest data showing women account for more than 93 per cent of sterilisations in the country. The report also found that male sterilisation services still remain inadequately available. The 11th...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar has announced plans to integrate 1,000 hours of compulsory skill training with the academic activities of undergraduate students to make them employable. But some academicians expressed fears that the move might dilute the main course for which they had enrolled themselves. "The BA, BCom and BSc students will get 1,000 hours of professional training. They will get 250 hours of training on soft...

-The Hindu Business Line Most suicides among landless and marginal farmers Hyderabad: Tenant farmers and cotton growers in Telangana are under severe distress according to a survey of farm families whose bread winner committed suicide. About 75 per cent of the suicide were by tenant farmers and 81 per cent of them were cotton growers. The survey by the Rythu Swarajya Vedika and a group of students from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)...

-The Telegraph Why farmers worry when Bhutan lifts stones Saralpara (India-Bhutan border): Since the 1990s, Anarshi Iswary and nearly 500 other farmers from five villages here have been joining hands every Wednesday during the monsoon to build, repair or rebuild a makeshift stone dam on the Saralbhanga, flowing down the hills of Bhutan about 4km away. The Sarpang district administration in Bhutan gives permission with a condition: no digging of the riverbed. The nine-foot-tall...