About one crore girls vanish every year through foeticide or other forms of killing, Governor of Uttarakhand Margaret Alva said here on Wednesday. She was addressing a Seminar on women's rights here organised by Congress leader Janet D Souza's non-governemental organisation ‘Parivartan.' “We call it the disappearing sex. One crore girls die every year or are not allowed [to be born],” Ms. Alva said. On the issue of ‘honour killings,' she...

In 2000, it was grown in a mere 46 hectares in State Cultivation peaked during 2010-11 in 9,020 hectares The commercial cultivation of the Indian Gooseberry (Emblica Officinalis), popularly known as Amla, is fast gaining ground in Tamil Nadu. Amla, called `Nelli' in Tamil, took commercial roots in the State a decade ago. It was a humble beginning then for this wild fruit at a time when other crops such as mangoes, citrus...

Faced with soaring food prices for the second time in three years, senior United Nations experts today called for greater investment in agriculture from both the public and private sectors to increase smallholder productivity.   “Policy-related solutions are also required to increase the longer-term resilience of global agriculture to allow greater levels of supply to markets as demand grows,” UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Senior Economist Jamie Morrison told a meeting...

Why women in Punjab villages shy away from offering their super-nutritious panjiri to guests from abroad, and instead offer them chips and coke? And, is there any connection between panjiri and failure of the Punjab farmers to save their own traditional (sustainable) seeds in favour of hybrids or new varieties dished out by PAU or private companies? 'There is a deep connection between the two,' says Arshinder Kaur, India coordinator for international...

The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Registrar-General and the Census Commissioner on a petition for a direction to enumerate and classify the Denotified Tribes and Nomadic Tribes (DTNT) in the second phase of the ongoing Census-2010-2011. A Bench comprising Justice J.M. Panchal and Justice H.L. Gokhale issued notice on the petition filed by Mohan Dhansing Chavhan after hearing his senior counsel Ravivarma Kumar, who submitted that there was...