-The Indian Express Husk, bran, straw, stover, skin, molasses and bagasse are some of the agro-waste products obtained from rice, wheat, maize, millet and sugarcane. Farmers usually burn these waste products after harvest, often leading to massive air pollution as experienced in Delhi during winters. Pune: A new study has found that coating jowar, bajra, wheat and maize seeds with organic mixture derived from sugarcane residue increases the yield of these cereals. City-based...

-Hindustan Times Universalise PDS, make it demand-driven; give more funds to states; and ramp up MGNREGS I pen this column with a depressing sense of deja vu. Back in late March as India went into lockdown, I wrote in these pages of the urgent need for the State to change the rules of the game, avoid red tape, improve Centre-state coordination and adapt agile administRATive processes as it sought to provide relief...

-The Hindu Addressing poverty is the key to improving the health and nutritional status of mothers and their infants From the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day, the Prime Minister declared that the government is considering raising the legal age of marriage for girls, which is currently 18 years. He said, “We have formed a committee to ensure that daughters are no longer suffering from malnutrition and they are married...

-Hindustan Times Dungarpur: India’s rural employment guarantee scheme is falling short in helping residents tide over the economic distress caused by the COVID-19 outbreak and the subsequent lockdown restrictions, data from Rajasthan suggest. Nearly 43% households who took up work under the scheme in Dungarpur, a largely tribal district in southern Rajasthan, had completed more than 50 of their 100 days of work in the first four months of the current financial...

-Down to Earth Highest rice acreage in six years, more farmers in farms, a bounty monsoon and an expected bumper harvest don't enthuse farmers as their earning dips   It is a piece of news that everybody would love to cheer about, except those who made this possible. The current kharif season is exceptional. In comparison to last year, over eight million more hectares of farms are under cultivation this season. There are more...