-IANS West Bengal: In a bid to preserve indigenous rice varieties of India, the West Bengal government has proposed setting up a rice museum to showcase 'folk' varieties of rice, a scientist said Wednesday. Proposed to be set up at the Agricultural Training Centre at Fulia in the state's Nadia district, the unique repository will display over 300 samples. "In the institute's bio-diversity conservation farm, we are maintaining, growing, distributing and characterising over...

-eSocialSciences.org The report is an outcome of a coordinated civil society effort led by CommonHealth, a national level coalition working on maternal-neonatal health and safe abortion. India has been reporting a steady decline in the country's maternal mortality ratio (MMR) over the last few years. It is in this context that several civil society organizations in the country came together in 2012 under an initiative led by CommonHealth called Dead...

-The Indian Express Moves to dilute labour-material ratio in MGNREGA and focus exclusively on select backward blocks will adversely impact rural poor. Before the general elections, free-market fundamentalists had lobbied fiercely to reshape so-called wasteful social-sector expenditures. Primary among their targets was the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which, according to them, should become an unconditional cash transfer scheme. Post-elections, the late Gopinath Munde's espousal of the MGNREGA went...

-DNA Joining ranks with nearly ten other big states, Gujarat government has now decided not to allow field trials of any Genetically Modified (GM) food crops within its boundaries. The decision is a significant one as it comes from the home state of prime minister Narendra Modi which he was leading till few months ago. Now with Gujarat also saying no to field trials of GM crops, Maharashtra remains the only state...

-FirstPost.com Farmer suicides haven't gone up in Maharashtra: Why is Modi tweaking data? Prime Minister Narendra Modi is aggressively attempting to make the high incidence of farmers's suicide in Maharashtra an important election issue. The BJP is probably trying to make inroads in rural Maharashtra where it is not known to be strong traditionally. Modi has quoted government statistics to suggest Maharashtra has had more than 10 farmers committing suicide every day. Needless...