-Down to Earth The Punjab government April 12 appealed to the central government to allow relaxation in the norms of shrivelled grains without any value cut, since the farmer had already been penalised on account of lower yield The Punjab government said April 13, 2022 that the Centre has agreed to revise its wheat procurement norms for shrivelled grains, a day after Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann urged it do to so. Record-breaking...

-TheWire.in The MoEFCC's recent decision to exclude new-gen GM plants from the ambit of existing biosafety rules endangers our food system, food exports, farmers' rights over their crops and the country's biological heritage for the sake of corporate profits. Christmas came early for Big Biotech companies and their allied seeds multipliers as the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has recently, through an office memorandum, excluded the new generation genetically...

On Janaushadhi Diwas this year (i.e., March 7th, 2022), Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi stated that the poor and the middle-class benefited from the 'Jan Aushadhi Kendras' that were set up to provide generic drugs at affordable prices. He said that the poor and the middle class saved around Rs.13,000 crore through these stores during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the wake of COVID 19 crisis, the 'Bureau of Pharma PSUs of India'...

-Down to Earth The city's inadequate drainage system results in frequent flooding, it says Kolkata in West Bengal has something to cheer about: Its much-criticised public transport system got an elaborate mention in the third instalment of the sixth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). The most significant report on the global climate crisis referred to the city’s public transport network as an “illustrative case study” to showcase integrated...

-Outlook India A closer look at the data on internally displaced communities, due to conflict and violence in India and their rehabilitation process, highlights that India has no uniform policy or act for their rehabilitation. At a time, when 'The Kashmir Files' has been sparking debates across the country on the issue of rehabilitation of displaced Kashmiri Pandits, Congress MP Vivek Tankha moved a bill in the Parliament for the social, political...