-Business Standard However, the states have broadly agreed to most other issues raised by NITI Aayog task force, including legalising land lease Consensus seems to have eluded a NITI Aayog task force on agriculture on use of genetically modified (GM) technology in pulses and oilseeds from state governments. However, state governments have broadly agreed to most other issues raised by the task force, including legalising land lease. Officials said the task force, which...

-DNA The report said it will ease the exit of those farmers who find farming unattractive or non-viable and economically strengthen those farmers who want to stay and raise the scale of operational holdings. Opening farmland for 'liberalised leasing' through government-run 'Land Banks' can be a 'win-win reform' in the Indian farm sector, stated the latest report of the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog taskforce on agricultural development. The report...

-Down to Earth The rate at which informal housing is being destroyed probably far exceeds the rate at which formal housing is being constructed Troubled by the degradation of environment on and around railway tracks, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) recently directed Delhi government to relocate all illegal settlements along tracks in Delhi. The tribunal reasoned that the residents of these settlements practise open defecation and litter on the tracks. Housing of the...

-Hindustan Times A migrant labourer not long ago, 37-year-old Sitaram Majhi is now a successful farmer. As Odisha’s agricultural fields starve for water due to drought conditions this year, Majhi never had a problem watering his crop in Kharamal village in Bargarh district’s parched Paikmal block, more than 500 km from Bhubaneswar. Equipped with chahala – a small traditional water harvesting structure – and a vermi-compost pit the three-acre farm, on which he...

-Huffington Post The heartbreaking story of the parents who jumped to their death in Delhi following the death of their 7-year-old son who succumbed to dengue after being turned away from two major city hospitals has shaken the public health establishment. Union health minister JP Nadda has ordered an enquiry into the incident. Just last month, a man was made to wait for his infant son's dead body because he couldn't pay...