-The Tribune The outlook for all things smart is opening up, including Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA). Varanasi, set to develop as a Smart City, will be a lighthouse for sectors seeking sustainable ways to handle demographic pressures, finite environmental resources and climate change. The Finance Minister's budget speech has promised a hundred smart cities. With urban India well covered, it is the turn now of smart agriculture, equipped both to enhance food...

-PTI NEW DELHI: India has showed some improvement in addressing corruption this year, ranking 85th among 175 countries as against 94th last year, graft watchdog Transparency International India (TII) said on Wednesday. Denmark retained its position as the least corrupt country in 2014 with a score of 92 while North Korea and Somalia shared the last place, scoring just 8, it said. In India's neighbourhood, China moved to 100th place, down from 80th...

-The Hindu India ranks 85 among 178 countries on the global Corruption Perception Index this year. India has marginally improved its ranking on the global Corruption Perception Index this year, on the back of prosecutions of high-level officials and hope that the new leadership will reduce corruption, Transparency International said on Wednesday morning. India's two-point improvement (on a total possible score of 100) did not count as a "significant change" unlike that in...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The runaway growth in states of subsidised solar pumps, which provide quality energy at near-zero marginal cost, can pose a bigger threat of groundwater over-exploitation than free power has done so far. The best way to meet this threat is by paying farmers to "grow" solar power as a remunerative cash crop. Doing so can reduce pressure on aquifers, cut the subsidy burden on electricity companies, reduce...

-IPS News SUNDARBANS: November is the cruelest month for landless families in the Indian Sundarbans, the largest single block of tidal mangrove forest in the world lying primarily in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. There is little agricultural wage-work to be found, and the village moneylender's loan remains unpaid, its interest mounting. The paddy harvest is a month away, pushing rice prices to an annual high. For those like Namita Bera,...