Large scale child labour persists in India, mostly in the agricultural sector and the informal economy despite initiatives by the government and instances of commercial sexual exploitation of minors are oft reported, a US report on the issue said on Wednesday. According to the India section of the annual report of the Department of Labor, children are exploited in the worst forms of child labour with a majority working in agriculture,...

Tamil Nadu: The north-east monsoon, 50 per cent in excess in the State, claims over 200 lives and destroys crops and infrastructure.A SERIES of weather systems, including a cyclone that missed Chennai narrowly, saw the skies open up over Tamil Nadu between November 4 and December 5, the period when the north-east monsoon is most active. Most of the 561 mm of rainfall that the State received between October 1...

As the famous sun-soaked Calangute beach gets decked up for yet another Christmas and New year parties, villagers of Shirgao situated a few kilometres away try to find new ways to escape the halo of toxic red dust that enter their drawing rooms every day. Shirgao has three mines — Chougules, Bandekar, Dempo — operating in and around the three-square-kilometre village. In the last five years, the village has turned from...

Climate change is springing an unpleasant surprise on agriculture in India, catching both farmers and governments unprepared. The erratic and deficit rainfall pattern and rise in temperature in recent years has even forced farmers to change cropping patterns and several areas have been declared drought-hit.Agricultural scientists acknowledge that even a mere one degree increase in average day temperature would adversely impact production of both wheat and rice crops (total annual...

He challenged 'socialist' Mulayam Singh Yadav, charging him with possessing disproportionate assets, contested elections against BJP stalwart Rajnath Singh and is now responsible for all the furore over the foodgrain scam. Vishwanath Chaturvedi, whose PIL became the basis for high court's December 3 order in the scam, is a compulsive litigant. "I have filed some three dozen public interest litigations of diverse nature," he said here on Tuesday. Most of these...