-The Hindu An online community is prodding women to adopt eco-friendly methods such as reusable cloth pads and menstrualcups and reverse the reliance on the feminine hygiene product Remember the popular sanitary napkin advertisement that urged menstruating women to “touch the pickle”? While ad CAMPAigns in the 1990s had a role in breaking certain taboos around menstruation, they also pushed a whole generation of adolescents into adopting sanitary napkins. Sanitary waste has...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: India’s forests are worth as much as the combined market value of BSE-listed companies with a notional value of Rs 115 trillion but the money collected from diverting parts of this land for industries won’t go to communities that live in and are dependent on the jungles. The Union environment ministry accepted most recommendations of a 2013 expert panel that hiked the rates at which industrialists pay for...

-Bloomberg When farmers in the scorched village of Horti in Western India were struggling to raise money for a canal, they turned to an unlikely source: a crowdfunding website called FuelADream. The farmers had never heard of crowdfunding before, but a local non-profit group suggested the site and helped them write a proposal that explained how a canal would help feed local families. Within weeks, they had raised Rs 300,000 ($4,490) from...

-The Indian Express Lokpal amendments underline the resistance of political class to scrutiny The Lokpal Act passed more than two and a half years ago has not been operationalised till date. The reason? The law states that the panel to select the Lokpal must include the recognised leader of opposition. Since the BJP government has not recognised anyone as the LoP, an amendment was required to ensure that the leader of the...

-TheHansIndia.com Warangal: It’s seemingly clear that state government’s CAMPAign for discouraging cotton cultivation this year has paid off with majority of farmers opting for pulses, inversely helping the Centre’s roadmap to achieve pulses self-sufficiency by increasing production in the next four years. Farmers, who earlier appeared averse to take up the cultivation of pulses, have finally heeded to the government’s call. It may be mentioned here that India is the largest producer,...