-Livemint.com Pulses are important from the perspectives of food security, environmental sustainability and balanced nutrition Most pulses such as pigeon pea (tur dal), black gram (urad), green gram (mung), field beans (waal), moth beans (matki) and horse gram (kulith) are native to the Indian subcontinent and have been an integral part of our diet for centuries. However, the single-minded focus on cereals over the last 50 years—the green revolution in wheat and...

-Down to Earth How companies are supplying unsafe and unverified nutrition supplements to children in Karnataka A curious case has emerged in Karnataka. Well-known companies, including Biocon, Jindal Steel and Scania, are supplying spirulina granules to undernourished and malnourished children enrolled in anganwadis (child daycare centres) under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), in direct contravention of a 2004 Supreme Court order which said, “Contractors shall not be used for supply...

-The Indian Express Decentralised industrialisation, entrepreneurship from below have been absent in states that have seen recent unrest among agrarian communities. “The soil here is very saline with electrical conductivity value of 9. We can grow only chloride-loving crops like coconut and the MR-2 variety of mulberry.” That was Tamil Selvi, recently telling this correspondent about the 5.75-acre land farmed by her father Natarajan Gounder at Velayuthagoundanpudur, a small village around 25...

-The Indian Express Beed District Collector Naval Kishore Ram said the district had received around 45 per cent of its average rainfall in the past four years. Beed: Celebrations are on in Marathwada. It’s been raining for nearly 10 days now, and the region till recently in the news for a water train is marking the end of four years of drought with sweets, drums and photos next to overflowing Dams. While...

-The Hindu Conservationists blame increased human activity along habitat. Kolkata: Scientists and wildlife conservationists are seeing red over the threat posed to Gangetic river dolphins by the National Waterways project. The animal is protected under Schedule I of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and is a declared endangered species. The development of the Ganga for shipping is seen by wildlife conservationists as the single-largest threat to the survival of the species, whose...