-Live Mint/ Bloomberg Conflicts between industry and farmers getting worse as water becomes more and more scarce Sachin Ingale slipped out of his family's two-room, white-painted mud hut about 4pm and walked into their farm field where the 22-year-old took a deep swig of pesticide from a plastic bottle. He died later that evening. Four months later, the mercury is pushing 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in his village in...

-The Times of India LONDON: India's Gangetic river dolphin and wild elephants figure in the latest 100 top mammals on the verge of extinction. The Zoological Society of London have for the first time scored the world's mammals according to how Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) they are. The list that includes the world's most extraordinary threatened species - frogs that give birth through their skin and mammals that are immune to...

-The Hindu   Government planning to set up paper board unit at a cost of Rs. 1200 crore TIRUCHI: Farmers of Mondipatti panchayat in Srirangam, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa's constituency, are up in arms over the move to acquire their land for the setting up of a paper board unit. The farmers argued that the land identified for the State-owned project had been under cultivation for three generations, and the livelihood of at least 2,000...

-The Hindu   They had sought inter alia universal social security cover for both organised and unorganised sectors Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday said some of the demands raised by the various central trade unions, for which they organised a nationwide general strike for two days in February, were in advanced stage of consideration of the government. Those demands include universal social security cover for workers in both organised and unorganised sectors and...

-Live Mint Some commentators have gone so far as to dismiss India's nutritional crisis as a ‘hoax' In a recent article, Columbia University economist Arvind Panagariya argued that India need not be ashamed of its malnutrition statistics as they are likely to be exaggerated. Panagariya's contention that international standards used to measure nutritional attainments of Indian children are inappropriate, as they fail to account for "genetic differences" seem to have found favour...