-The Indian Express With the spotlight on packaged foods’ failure to clear safety tests, The Indian Express samples 11 states and finds out how ill-equipped and understaffed their labs are. For a processed food market estimated at Rs 7.34 lakh crore by the Annual Survey of Industries, 72 state labs and 68 private ones with National Accrediation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) accreditation are conducting tests in India’s 640...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The summer monsoon weakened across large swathes of India in the past century, scientists said today, linking the reductions in rainfall to hitherto-unobserved trends that they say portend a dangerous drying of the Indian subcontinent. Scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, said they had identified a significant weakening trend in summer rainfall between 1901 and 1912 over central and northern India, the Ganga-Brahmaputra basins and...

-Business Standard The World Bank's latest report "Mind, Society and Behaviour" calls for re-designing development policy based on a more realistic understanding of how human beings think and behave. The lead author of the report, Varun Gauri, was in New Delhi and spoke to Anjuli Bhargava on the thinking behind the report and what India can do with it. Edited excerpts: * Right from the cover design to the title, this report...

-The Hindu Food inflation remained positiv, at 3.8 % compared to what it was in May 2014. Wholesale Price Index (WPI) inflation was -2.36 per cent in May, marking the seventh consecutive month in which it has been negative, compared to -2.65 per cent in April. Food inflation remained positive, at 3.8 per cent compared to what it was in May 2014. However, the consensus among analysts is that this will not...

-Business Standard Recent data on the FSSAI show its commendable performance. But there is an urgent need to address certain issues related to the way it functions and its infrastructure The recent controversy over reports of higher than permissible levels of lead and monosodium glutamate in some brands of instant noodles has brought into sharp focus the functioning of the government body that regulates food safety and standards in the country. How...