-Hindustan Times Policy makers have no control over fickle weather whims and complex forecasts. Regardless of the eventual course and quality of summer rains brought on by drafts of breeze that stream 8,000 km from the southern Pacific, the early predictions did give an early heads up of what was likely in the next few months. Yet, every drought year, India’s response to deal with scanty summer rains has been knee-jerk, marked...
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Inefficient PDS, tardy laws behind India's hunger capital tag
-Hindustan Times India has earned the discomfiting distinction of being home to the highest number of hungry people among 129 countries monitored by the Food and Agriculture Organization. This was revealed in the State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015 report. Though India has improved its own record here by reducing the figure from 210 million in 1990-92 to 194 million now, it has fallen behind China in this regard....
More »Weather department downgrades monsoon forecast to 88%, stokes drought fears; govt 'prays'
-Hindustan Times India’s June-September monsoon, the lifeblood of Asia’s third-largest economy, will most likely be “deficient” this year with the met department downgrading its forecast from 93% to 88%, earth sciences minister Harsh Vardhan said on Tuesday. The India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) revision -- which had forecast “below normal” monsoon in April -- will potentially toughen challenges for the Narendra Modi government already battling a farm crisis triggered by unseasonal rains in...
More »IIT-Roorkee scientists design quake-resistant house from used tyres -Vanita Shrivastava
-Hindustan Times Scientists at IIT Roorkee have come up with a new construction technique for earthquake resistant housing using recycled pieces of rubber tyres and the scheme is based on the principle of dissipating energy. Pankaj Agarwal of the department of earthquake engineering, IIT Roorkee told HT: “This is based on interlocking of pre-cast slotted concrete blocks with the help of energy dissipation links. These links are prepared by recycling pieces of...
More »UP staring at drought worse than 2014 -Brajendra K Parashar
-Hindustan Times Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh is staring at a drought worse than last year’s, officials said on Thursday, raising worries of a severe impact on the kharif crop crucial to feeding millions of people in the country’s most populous state. The state government has put 70 out of the 75 districts on high alert and also prepared a contingency plan after the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) forecast a below normal monsoon this...
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