Nearly 400 people have been admitted to hospitals in north India after eating adulterated flour, police say. All the patients had consumed snacks made from buckwheat flour. A mill in the northern state of Rajasthan has been traced as the source, police said. The patients complained of vomiting, diarrhoea and stomach ache. Cases of food poisoning have been reported from the capital, Delhi, and towns of Meerut, Ghaziabad and Bulandshar in Uttar Pradesh...

Dams may have been the temples of modern India to Jawaharlal Nehru, but Uttarakhand’s BJP government has stopped work on a hydel project because priests and devotees fear it might submerge a Kali temple. The government’s surprise move on Thursday on the 400MW Alakananda project is steeped in local politics and coincides with a countrywide debate on development-versus-environment. But it also highlights how easy it has become to block power projects in...

It is popular in periods of Hindu religious fasting like Navratri. It is also commonly found on the shelves of health food stores. But for the tribals in the Sahyadri hills in Maharashtra, buckwheat is a way of life. Unlike in the hilly regions of northern India where kuttu, as the millet-like crop is called in Hindi, is found in plenty, spotting buckwheat fields can be difficult on the Sahyadri hills....