-The Hindu Business Line But they needn’t, if India sticks to the view that the benchmark price for measuring extent of support is too low and outdated India is concerned over the delay in reaching a ‘permanent solution’ to the problem of dealing with food procurement subsidies. The WTO members are thrashing out a work programme for the 10th Ministerial to be held in Nairobi this December. Under Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), developing...

-Hindustan Times While searching for updates on the United Nations Third International Conference on Financing for Development, which took place in Addis Ababa recently, I came across an interesting piece of news: Music maestro AR Rahman and Bollywood superstar Hrithik Roshan would join a seven-day global campaign to popularise the sustainable development goals (SDGs), which are a new set of universal goals, targets and indicators that 193 UN member states will...

-IPS News NIYAMGIRI: As the rhythmic thumping of dancing feet reaches a crescendo, the women offer a song to their forest god for a bountiful harvest. Then, with earthen pots on their heads and their spiritual creatures – a pigeon and a hen – in tow, they proceed in single file on a long march away from their village of Kadaraguma, located on the Niyamgiri mountain range in the Rayagada District of...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre is likely to work out the contours of the reworked land acquisition bill by next week amid indications that it may be purged of all the politically unpopular provisions. It is learnt that the Modi government may allow states to draft their own acquisition laws with the frame of reference being the central law which would only have "pro-people" measures; a tack aimed at...

-Down to Earth Srihari kurade proudly walks through his orchard of kokum (Garciniaindica), a wild fruit that is famous for its therapeutic properties. With more than 2,400 trees spread over seven hectares (ha) of land, his orchard in South Goa is the world’s largest kokum plantation. Kurade is also perhaps the only farmer in the region to have taken up systematic large-scale plantation of the fruit that is endemic to the...