-The Hindustan Times The double standards are clear. In 2012, the US provided $100 billion for domestic food aid, up from the $95 billion it spent on feeding its 67 million undernourished population in 2010 including spending on food coupons and other supplementary nutrition programmes. In India, the Food Bill is expected to cost $20 billion and will feed an estimated 850 million people. Against an average supply of 358kg/person of...

-The Hindustan Times Mumbai: Indian companies have acquired land more than nine times the size of Delhi on foreign shores, as cultivable land at home is lost to urbanisation, industry and infrastructure projects. Land Matrix, a global land monitoring initiative that tracks land dealings worldwide, placed India among the top 10 countries that have acquired large tracts of land abroad, primarily for agriculture, in Africa and Asia. The country ranks eighth,...

-PTI LONDON: An Indian climate change activist who works with local communities and governments for environmental change has been awarded the Commonwealth youth award. Priti Rajagopalan, 23, received a 5,000-pound grant towards her work at a ceremony held at the Commonwealth secretariat headquarters in London, the Commonwealth said on October 19. "This award inspires me to move forward and to take a lot more people with me, with the same spirit, into the...

-The Hindu In addition to ailments caused by poverty, salt pan workers across the country suffer from several occupational diseases, including chronic dermatitis, loss of vision and hypothyroidism In Adivasi Colony, a remote hamlet off the road from Vedaranyam to Kodikarai in Tamil Nadu, most of the adults in the 200-odd households work in salt manufacturing. They prepare salt pans manually, irrigate them with saline water which is three times saltier than...

-The Hindu A warmer world may be leading to a delayed withdrawal of the Indian monsoon, hitting crop yield and affecting the livelihoods of small farmers and agricultural workers The joys of a bountiful southwest monsoon are increasingly changing to anxiety as the rains unseasonally drag on in many parts of India. "The normal rains should be from June 1 to mid-September. In fact it usually reduces by August 15, and is...