-Business Standard 85%of the country gets normal rains, but Karnataka declares drought The southwest monsoon season (June to September) across the country in 2016 was 97 per cent of the long period Average (LPA). Although it fell short of predictions by the weather office, this was the first normal monsoon in the country since 2013. If the rainfall is between 96 and 104 per cent of the LPA, it is considered normal. LPA...

-The Hindu There are multiple ways to arrive at an answer, but each metric points in a different direction. If someone asks you how the Indian economy is doing, how would you answer? Would you say that the Gross Domestic Product and Gross Value Added (GVA) are both above 7 per cent, and so the economy is growing strongly? Or would you say that the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) has contracted for two straight...

-Hindustan Times Mumbai: The 2015-16 drought in Marathwada was caused not by climate change but poor management of water resources, a study conducted by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology-Pune and the Indian Institute of Science-Bengaluru has revealed. The two institutions analysed 145 years of monsoon rainfall data to arrive at the conclusion. While admitting that the region is prone to droughts, the study states that the magnitude of the last drought could...

-The Hindu The State has taken the lead in providing some essential and basic health-care training to these informal providers. In West Bengal, nearly 3,000 quacks — informal health-care providers with no formal medical education — are to be trained for six months. The crash course in medicine, and to be conducted by 130 trained nurses, is to begin from December 1. The objective is to provide these informal providers with a minimum...

-The Indian Express In a scenario of depressed crop prices, a unique PPP model in milk shows the way out. Coimbatore: For roughly a decade from 2004-05 to 2013-14, Indian farmers experienced rising incomes from higher crop prices year after year — something they pretty much took for granted. That party ended with the crash in global commodity prices, hitting agricultural exports hard and translating into lower farm-gate realisations for most crops. But...