-Hindustan Times Audit report says most food testing labs in country are ill-equipped. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), India’s constitutionally mandated federal auditor, has cited serious lapses in enforcing food-safety norms in the country, which, it said, could be putting public health at risk. A majority of the country’s food-testing laboratories were poorly managed, the report said. It found that 65 of the 72 state-wide food laboratories were not accredited to the...

-Hindustan Times Farm distress is not confined to Gujarat alone. The economic viability of farming is increasingly coming under stress. Uncertain rainfall and price fluctuations can make things even worse in bad years What is the biggest political economy takeaway from the 2017 Gujarat elections? The schism between India and Bharat is for real. The BJP’s victory is only due to its dominance in urban areas. The Congress has won a majority...

-Hindustan Times KC Rekha may have become a fisherwoman out of necessity, but she’s come to love her profession, despite the odds and uncertainty, despite her life being as complex as the tangled net in her vessel. Thrissur (Kerala): KC Rekha, a 45-year-old mother of four sits alone on an isolated beach of a Kerala fishing village at the crack of dawn, untangling a mess of nylon fishing nets on which her family’s...

-Hindustan Times Close to half, or 48%, of pregnancies were unintended and 0.8 million women used unsafe methods for an abortion, putting their health and lives at risk. New Delhi: One in three of 48.1 million pregnancies in India ended in an abortion, according to the country’s first large-scale study on abortions and unintended pregnancies that accounted for 2015 data. The country recorded around 15.6 million abortions in 2015, reports the study published...

-Hindustan Times India should lead the charge for demanding a better deal on agricultural issues to counter rising protectionist tendencies in the West The 11th Ministerial Conference (henceforth ministerial) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) begins on December 10 in Buenos Aires. Commerce minister Suresh Prabhu has downplayed the need for a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security as a peace clause already exists. He has even termed the demand...