-The Indian Express Home to some 400 Santhals, an indigenous tribe, Mahuadanr has a cemented road, but most of the house are made of mud, with few pucca houses. The village faces an “acute water shortage” in summers and locals barely eat nutritious food. Dumka: In Jharkhand’s Mahuadanr village, which falls under the Anansol Kuruwa panchayat in the Dumka Lok Sabha constituency, JMM party chief Shibu Soren — the sitting MP...

  Initial media reports suggest how timely interventions by various official agencies in Odisha prevented loss of human lives when Cyclone Fani hit that state on 3rd May. However, it is essential to also take into account recent official reports by different agencies, which indicate that the impact of the cyclone has been quite severe. A situation assessment report on the impact of Fani cyclone dated 15th May, 2019, which was released...

-The Hindu 35 lakh poultry birds killed in Odisha The initial estimate of Cyclone Fani’s damage to standing crops in Odisha has been pegged at Rs. 150 crore, but the State Agriculture Department warns that the destruction of storage facilities and harvested crops stored in the open could further spike those losses. Low insurance penetration could also exacerbate farmers’ losses, especially in the poultry sector. “Because of the advance warning, it was possible to...

-The Indian Express Amid the ongoing controversy that erupted with PepsiCo India’s lawsuits against 11 farmers for growing its patented potato variety, The Indian Express meets the affected farmers to find the genesis of the problem . Among the 11 farmers of Gujarat who have been slapped lawsuits by PepsiCo India for “illegally” growing its patented potato variety FL 2027, are Fulchand Kachchhawa and his brother Suresh of Malgadh village in...

-Hindustan Times To understand the extent of the damage, the Haryana agriculture department is getting the state’s brinjal crop tested to determine whether it is GM-free at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), which will share the test results with the Haryana government next week. Farmers in Haryana and experts fear widespread contamination of genetically modified (GM) brinjal or eggplant in the state with the farmer accused of cultivating Bt...