-Press Information Bureau (Ministry of Agriculture) The two-day National Conference on Agriculture for Kharif Campaign has come out with detailed strategy for maximising crop production during the coming kharif season. The focus will be on ensuring timely availability of fertilizers and quality seed and also sufficient credit to farmers. Based on inputs from States and the Fertilizer Ministry, it is established that sufficient quantities of fertilizers and seeds are available in...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: The flight to campus is not always beyond the seas. The comfort of being close to home is driving several young Indians to different Indian states to pursue an education. In the last 10 years, a total of 37 lakh moved to get a degree, showing that a discouraging academic landscape near home is no longer keeping its youth from travelling to the brighter lights elsewhere. Departure rate...

-Outlook The faecal matter hits the rotary blades, politically-but we're still staring at a sanitation disaster "Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate mostly besides the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover." -V.S. Naipaul An Area of Darkness, 1964 Not...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A decade-and-a-half is a long time when it comes to the rapidly changing face of a city. But is it long enough to make as many as 21 lakes disappear from the city's map? Delhi seems to have lost half of its lakes since 1997-98. Natural heritage scientists from The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach) recently presented these findings at the...

-Down to Earth Our policy makers should move away from the income criterion for estimating poverty and take cognisance of other indicators Amid mounting criticism and heated debates about the poverty line, a challenge has resurfaced to examine whether there could be a single non-monetary criterion of estimating poverty. A poverty line is a monetary cut-off point below which a person is deemed to be poor. Thus, any attempt to measure poverty...