-PTI Job creation in India successively slowing down; employment might shrink 7 million by 2050 As many as 550 jobs have disappeared every day in last four years and if this trend continues, employment would shrink by 7 million by 2050 in the country, a study has claimed. Farmers, petty retail vendors, contract labourers and construction workers are the most vulnerable sections facing never before livelihood threats in India today, the study by...

-The Indian Express The opposition’s main contention is that the GM mustard hybrid incorporates three alien genes — barnase, barstar and bar — rendering it inherently unsafe for human and animal health. Fifty years ago, Union Minister for Food and Agriculture Chidambaram Subramaniam took the decision to import 18,000 tonnes of seeds of Lerma Rojo 64A and Sonora 64 wheat from Mexico. The seeds arrived just in time for their planting in...

-AFP Rome: Climate change could sink up to 122 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030, mostly in South Asia and Africa, where small farmers would see their output plummet, the UN warned Monday. In an annual report, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) warned that a worst-case scenario involving high-impact climate change would pound the communities that rely on agriculture for their livelihood. It called for a “broad-based transformation of...

-Livemint.com We don’t know enough about the socio-economic status of different caste groups, and our political class doesn’t want us to know Over the past couple of years, one Indian state after another has been on the boil because of caste-based agitations. The latest state to be engulfed in caste conflict is Maharashtra, where a stir by the dominant caste of Marathas seems to have led other backward classes (OBCs) and...

-Down to Earth The total health burden arising from poor diet exceeds the combined burden of unsafe sex, alcohol, drug and tobacco use     The Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition and the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) jointly launched the South Asian Policy Initiative for Improved Nutrition and Growth (SAPLING), a policy initiative to improve nutrition and diet in South Asian countries, on October 6, in New...