-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...

-Live Mint Panel to review Sachar committee proposals says conditions of Muslims not changed perceptibly since 2006 New Delhi: In a politically uncomfortable revelation ahead of the general election, the interim report of a high-level panel says that a determined policy thrust by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has done little to improve the social and economic enfranchisement of India's Muslim minority. The interim report of the panel appointed by...

-The Hindu Restricting the price subsidy to coarse grains alone will not only work better from both fiscal and equity points of view but also weaken the incentives for graft The National Food Security Act (NFSA), passed recently by Parliament, offers 5 kg per person a month of cereals at highly subsidised prices to more than the bottom two-thirds of the population. It has been rightly hailed as the largest welfare programme...

-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...

-Live Mint About 30% of 5,350 farmer households surveyed said they would vote for the BJP New Delhi: A third of farming households, a key electoral constituency, are likely to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the upcoming general election, says a survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for Bharat Krishak Samaj, a farmers' association. About 30% of 5,350 farmer households surveyed across 18...