India, the world’s second-biggest rice grower, may have a record harvest this year as increased planting offset drought in the east of the country. Production may total 100 million tonnes in the year ending June 2011, compared with 89.3 million tonnes a year ago, said Vijay Setia, president of All India Rice Exporters’ Association. Output was a record 99.2 million tonnes in the year ended June 30, 2009, according to the...

Governor M..H. Farook today declared eight more districts as drought-hit, bringing the entire state in the parched bracket ahead of a central team visit. With this, the memorandum of demands to be forwarded to the Union government, seeking financial assistance to mitigate the effects of drought, will be redesigned. It is now pegged at around Rs 3,000 crore against the earlier Rs 2,157 crore. An eight-member central team, led by managing director...

Delhi MPs have failed to make optimum use of funds under MP Local Area Development (MPLAD) scheme, clocking up a utilisation rate of just 86.93%, well below the national average of 90.32%. According to a report of the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, Delhi was placed among laggard states when it came to utilisation of funds till July this year. Since the MPLAD scheme was launched in 1993, total...

Complexity and unsolved problems are at the very heart of the sustainability challenge, and at the very heart of M.S. Swaminathan's thinking and essays. In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus offered the piercing insight that geometric population growth would inevitably outstrip food production, leaving society destitute and hungry. Since that time, our optimism of beating the “Malthusian curse” has waxed and waned. Few people in modern history have done more to help...

India’s monsoon rains were about 3% above normal in July, the highest for the month since 2005, making a repeat of last year’s crop failure and food-led inflation surge unlikely. Heavy rain since the third week of July has brought readings above normal for the first time this monsoon season, according to weather office data, wiping out the seasonal shortfall in almost all major grain areas other than in the east...