-Hindustan Times Declining data cost is boosting data traffic and internet usage in India and will take rural users to 87 million by December-end and 106 million by end-March 2016, a study by the communications ministry says. India has overtaken US and is behind only China on internet usage, and the government expects user-base to hit 450 million by next year-end. “Our studies have shown that the growth of e-commerce activities and government-to-citizen online...

-Down to Earth From providing agricultural information for specific countries to identifying trends in the sector, censuses serve a variety of purpose In the backdrop of a round of country-driven agricultural censuses which will begin in 2016 to gather information and statistics on the global agriculture sector, senior FAO statiscian Jairo Castano discusses with Down To Earth the importance of the exercise. * How helpful are agricultural censuses in gathering information and statistics...

The Digital India Mission, launched by the NDA government, aims to connect 2.5 lakh village panchayats with high speed broadband internet by December, 2016 so that citizens can access online services. However, available facts reveal that this is a difficult task to be accomplished. In rural areas, among the youth aged 14-29 about 82 percent do not know how to operate a computer. In urban areas, nearly 51 percent of youth...

-The Hindu This agriculture dept. offering will also help them find out fertilizer availability Tamil Nadu: As farmers in the delta districts eagerly await the opening of the Mettur dam, they are also thinking of other things they need – seeds and fertilizers. To ensure that farmers get their inputs on time, the agriculture department has recently introduced a system whereby they can check availability online. Using Smart Phones, it has linked 9,600...

-The Hindu Business Line New variant to generate electricity from cooking Greenway, a Mumbai-based start-up which produces eco-friendly and fuel-efficient biomass stoves, will build prototype units by July that can also generate 10 watt electricity from the cooking heat. Intended to be an alternative to harmful and inefficient traditional mud stoves, Greenway’s ‘smart stove’ claims 50 per cent fuel savings and 70 per cent reduction in smoke emission. It has been tested and...