-The Hindu New Delhi: Parliament’s Standing Committee on Agriculture may have expressed concern at the unscientific and excessive use of pesticides in agriculture that pose a threat both to the environment and human health. But experts say their judicious use, combined with safe agricultural practices, is the only way out as the country’s growing demand for food cannot be met through organic farming. In its recently presented report in Parliament for 2015-16,...

-The Hindu Business Line Even though technological changes imperil many jobs, care services are unlikely to be affected thanks to the significance of face-to-face human interaction involved in them Across the world there is much gloom and doom about the impact of technological changes on jobs, as automation and other innovations are seen to threaten not just blue-collar jobs but also many forms of office work. It is true that the way...

-The New Indian Express CHENNAI: In the quiet corners of the State, farmers of five panchayats have been silently revolutionising pulse farming. Under ‘Pulse Panchayat’, an MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) initiative, over 1000 farmers in Pudukkotai have managed to achieve a 60% increase in the yield and also increasing the land under pulses cultivation in the three years since the project was started in 2013, the farmers said. What was first started...

-The Hindu India must convert its young population to a competitive advantage, and nutrition and health are foundational to that outcome. The “Global Nutrition Report 2016” once again demonstrates India’s slow overall progress in addressing chronic malnutrition, manifest in stunting (low weight for age), wasting (low weight for height), micronutrient deficiencies and over-weight. Our track record in reducing the proportion of undernourished children over the past decade has been modest at best,...

-Frontline The inability to resolve pressing problems with respect to the production, distribution and availability of food is one of the important failures of the entire economic reform process. IN the fateful month of July 1991, when the devaluation of the Indian rupee presaged the introduction of a whole series of liberalising economic reforms, agriculture was very far from the minds of most policymakers and commentators. The immediate focus was on...