-Down to Earth Farmers are being pushed to suicide amid market shortage   Chilli farmers in Telangana’s Subakkapalli village, Bhopalapalli district, are living their worst nightmare. A new pest, black thrips (Thrips parvispinus), has destroyed over 40 hectares (ha) of standing crop in a matter of months. In Sidduri Ravindra Rao’s farm, the initial signs of the attack were reported in the first week of December last year. He increased the frequency of...

-The Hindu The delay in compensation is appalling and the inaction is in breach of court orders, says Bench The Supreme Court has slammed the Kerala government for doing “virtually nothing” for Endosulfan pesticide exposure victims. The court said the State’s inaction was “appalling” and amounted to a breach of the apex court’s 2017 judgment, which had ordered the State to pay ₹5 lakh each to the victims in three months. Five years...

-The Telegraph Union health ministry asserts that Civil Registration System figures should be considered 'authentic' A table on “estimated deaths” is missing from India’s annual birth-and-death report for 2020. The absence has fuelled fresh questions about how the Union health ministry calculated that authorities had registered 99.9 per cent of the country’s deaths in 2020, the Covid-19 outbreak’s first year. A 99.9 per cent registration level would mean the country had recorded almost all...

-Newsclick.in Experts worry that with the government aggressively promoting a "singular reductionist corporate-controlled silver bullet solution" like fortified rice, a myriad of diverse local and natural solutions will get neglected and even eroded. Synthetic fortification of rice is not proven to be effective and can be toxic to many Indians, according to a report prepared by the Right to Food Campaign. The report was released following a three-day fact-finding visit to Jharkhand...

-Hindustan Times Women activists and experts from the region say that though the figures show a decline, they might not reflect the reality of the problem on the ground. The only exception was Assam where the figure increased from 24.5% in NFHS-4 to 32% in NFHS-5. Guwahati: Domestic violence faced by women seems to be declining in most parts of northeast India, except Assam, if figures of the recently released National Family...