-The Times of India GURUGRAM: The sand storm conditions prevailing in the city for three days has raised fears of early desertification of the Delhi-NCR region among environmental experts. According to the experts, there has been an increase in frequency, longevity and density of sand storms in this region this year. “The frequency of sand storms has increased in the city in the past one decade. While earlier (in 2002), summer sand...

-TheWire.in Pesticide poisoning is the leading method of suicide among both men and women in the country. It is also the method that is easiest to prevent – by banning and removing highly hazardous ones from agricultural practice through legislation. The ban on highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) currently being discussed in India will not only protect the environment and improve the public health but will also achieve another rarely acknowledged goal –...

-Livemint.com Soaring sales of herbicide tolerant, genetically modified cotton seeds put farmers across states at risk New Delhi: Regulatory failure has led to a surge in sales of unapproved herbicide tolerant (HT) genetically modified (GM) cotton seed packets in the ongoing Kharif planting season, putting thousands of farmers at risk across states such as Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. The regulatory failure has been precipitated by the fact that the genetic engineering...

-Down to Earth The criteria for exemption from labelling of food containing GM ingredients need to be much stricter The draft Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2018, released by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) in April 2018, may be a good beginning, but it has major gaps that needs to be plugged to make it effective, according to the analysis of the draft regulations...

-The Economic Times The world’s oldest networked infrastructure, money, is increasingly dematerialising and fusing with the world’s latest networked infrastructure, the Internet. As the network effects compound, disruptive acceleration hurtle us towards financial utopia, or dystopia. Our fate depends on what we get right and what we get wrong with the law, code and architecture, and the market. The Internet, unfortunately, has completely transformed from how it was first architected. From a...