-The Hindu In the cotton belt of Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district, pesticide poisoning through inhalation has caused 21 deaths in three months. Serish Nanisetti reports on the deadly cocktail of absent regulation, government apathy, and farmers’ desperation that continues to claim lives Geeta Bandu Sonule doesn’t cry any more. Not even when she relives the final moments of her husband Chandrakant Bandu Sonule (40), who died two months ago, after spraying pesticide on...

-Hindustan Times India should lead the charge for demanding a better deal on agricultural issues to counter rising protectionist tendencies in the West The 11th Ministerial Conference (henceforth ministerial) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) begins on December 10 in Buenos Aires. Commerce minister Suresh Prabhu has downplayed the need for a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security as a peace clause already exists. He has even termed the demand...

In a country where inter-departmental coordination hardly takes place in the government, a joint exercise undertaken by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) is bearing fruits. The NCRB has started coordinating with the RBI for collection and sharing of Fake Indian Currency Note (FICN) data. The new tables, which have been introduced in the NCRB's annual publication on crime, reveal that although the...

-The Hindu Deregulating bamboo production does not address the issue of building a transparently governed forest sector Governments everywhere tend to look for quick-fixes, overlooking complexities and ignoring the big picture. The move by the Centre to “de-regulate” bamboo production by amending the definition of “trees” under the Indian Forest Act (IFA), 1927, is a great example of this tendency. In November 2017, the Central government issued an ordinance whereby “bamboo” was...

-The Indian Express Low crime rate numbers often don’t mean citizens are safer, and ‘rape capital’ and ‘crime capital’ could both be unfair assessments. In reports such as the one published by the National Crime Records Bureau last week, the quality of data is important, as is its placement in the right context. New Delhi: “It is a capital MIStake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts...