A recently released report shows that only a few enterprises belonging to the labour-intensive Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector could take advantage of the 205 number of public schemes (available in October 2015) of various Ministries or Departments of the Government, as listed at the website www.clusterobservatory.in.   (Please click here to access the report on MSMEs and the challenges they face). Prepared by the Foundation for MSME Clusters...

-Business Standard Court to hear petition against release, field testing of all GM crops on that day The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the commercial release of the genetically modified (GM) variety of mustard till October 17, on a petition that this could have severe consequences on the environment and human health. The petition, filed a day earlier by an Aruna Rodriguez, had sought a moratorium on open-field trials and commercial release of...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: This winter season when Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal pleads for votes in Punjab, the Capital’s residents will be pleading the neighbouring states for clean air. Each year, farm fires in the surrounding states raise particulate matter in the city’s air by more than six times the normal limit. The air quality in Delhi has already started deteriorating . Last weekend recorded the worst air quality in the...

-TheWire.in Swayam Shikshan Prayog, a Maharashtra-based non-profit, is helping women become clean energy pioneers, in an initiative that has earned them a UN climate award. Varsha Pawar of Osmanabad district in Maharashtra was like any other housewife till she started selling solar cook stoves and lamps in her neighbourhood a little over a year ago. Life was never the same again. Today, she is the sarpanch (village council chief) of Tirth Khurd,...

-The Hindu Business Line Although literacy levels are improving, there’s not enough learning happening. This calls for urgent attention This year, marks the 50th year of International Literacy Day. In 1966, UNESCO declared September 8 as International Literacy Day to “mobilize the international community and to promote literacy as an instrument to empower individuals, communities and societies”. At Independence in 1947, India had a literacy rate of 12 per cent, which stands today...