-Livemint.com In India, 9 million people left farming between 2001 and 2011 largely due to distress, not because industry invited them, says Shyam Khadka, India’s representative at the FAO Shyam Khadka, India’s representative at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, says more Indians are moving out of agriculture due to distress and not because the manufacturing sector is inviting them. In an interview, Khadka calls for converting food...

-IndiaClimateDialogue.net In north Bihar, where floods devastate standing crops with increasing regularity in an era of climate change, a marginalised community is fighting all odds to protect an indigenous flood-resistant variety of rice. Sahorwa village is caught between the embankments of two major rivers in north Bihar. Between the Kosi river’s western embankment and Kamla Balan river’s eastern embankment, this village of 110 Musahar families remains flooded for seven to eight months...

-The Financial Express Indian agriculture’s reliance on monsoon rainfall has reduced considerably over the last few years thanks to the increase in area irrigated, although there are still pockets — particularly in east and central India — where rains still are a decisive determinant of crop. Key grain-producing states Punjab, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh have most of the cropped areas under irrigation coverage (see table). Unless...

-Livemint.com The Gorakhpur tragedy must be seen against the larger backdrop of public health failure in Uttar Pradesh The recent tragedy of more than 85 children and newborns who died in Gorakhpur has, not for the first time, put the spotlight starkly on the country’s ailing public health system. The lack of all things important to human settlements—sanitation, disease surveillance, primary healthcare, tertiary hospitals, resources, life-saving equipment, political will and public health...

-PTI   NEW DELHI: An additional investment of Rs 6,399 billion is required from both public and private sectors to enable doubling of farmers' real income by 2022-23, a government committee said in its latest report. At present, public investment is below national average in states like Assam, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Punjab and Odisha. Less developed states in the eastern region continue to lag behind in...