-Hindustan Times Sukhwant Singh, a farmer in Haryana’s Kurukshetra, had most of his 12 acres of agricultural land under paddy. After harvesting his crop, he set the paddy stubble on fire, burning it to the ground within a few hours. Singh and most other paddy growers in Punjab and Haryana, who are facing financial constraints due to falling productivity and dwindling returns, do not care about the ban on stubble burning put...
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Green farms and clean air
-The Hindu The massive pollution cloud enveloping northern India every year is a good example of the disconnect between official policy and ground realities. It has been known for long that burning of agricultural waste in the northern States significantly contributes to the poor air quality in large parts of the Indo-Gangetic Basin, with local and cascading impacts felt from Punjab all the way to West Bengal. Harmful fine particulate matter...
More »Govts should not blindly promote micro-irrigation schemes -J Harsha
-Deccan Herald Water in India has now become a contentious issue due to rise in demand, climate change and growing mismanagement. With erratic rainfall and recurring droughts in 2012, 2015 and 2016, “water saving” has become a high priority for the governments. As the agriculture sector consumes 80% of freshwater in the country, micro-irrigation – drip and sprinkler irrigation – has been catapulted as a policy priority because drip and sprinkler irrigation...
More »Share of Muslims in jail bigger than in the population, show NCRB data -Deeptiman Tiwary
-The Indian Express In Maharashtra, roughly every tenth person is Muslim, as opposed to almost every third inmate in its prisons. Muslims make up 15.8% of all convicts and 20.9% of all undertrials in jails across the country. This is higher than their share in the country’s population, which is 14.2%. But in some states, this gap is far wider. According to latest data on prisons by the National Crime Records Bureau...
More »PMO props up states on GM crops -Richa Sharma
-The New Indian Express NEW DELHI: Faced with stiff opposition from the states, civil society groups and even the RSS on GM food crops, the Central government is reaching out to the state governments to bring them on board for field trials. Acting on the directives of the PMO, the environment ministry on October 21 organised a meeting which was attended by representatives from different states. More such meetings are expected to...
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