-The Guardian Rice conservationist Debal Deb grapples with 'mindless Indian elite' to reintroduce genetically diverse, drought-tolerant varieties   Fifty years ago, every Indian village would probably have grown a dozen or more rice varieties that grew nowhere else. Passed down from generation to generation and family to family, there would have been a local variety for every soil and taste - rice that would grow well in droughts or deep floods, which had...

-The Financial Express The urgent need to end world hunger appears to have promoted superfood crops at the expense of nutritional diversity Finally, we know why India is facing a spurt in diet-linked lifestyle disorders while it continues to struggle to feed the hungry. The paradox is seen in several developing economies, the answer is easily hazarded but now, for the first time, a formal study by the International Centre for Tropical...

-The Asian Age "The replacement of the rich diversity of Punjab with monocultures of rice in the kharif season and wheat in the rabi season has also contributed to the impoverishment of the soils and farmers" The year 2014 marks the 30th anniversary of Operation Bluestar, a military operation which took place in June 1984 in Punjab. It was ordered by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: If your child was born in the last couple of years, he or she is likely to live five years more than children born a decade ago. Statistics released by the Union ministry of health and family welfare show that life expectancy in India has gone up by five years, from 62.3 years for males and 63.9 years for females in 2001-2005 to 67.3 years and 69.6...

-The New Indian Express   Most people would have been shocked to read the year-end report that India has been ranked 63rd, much below countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, on the Global Hunger Index (GHI), a yardstick used by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to comprehensively measure global hunger. The index is calculated as an average of three indices-undernourishment, underweight children and low child mortality rate-and is measured on a...