-The Times of India Chennai: For long, they were dubbed as the villain among vegetation, sucking all the water from ground, spreading rapidly along the coast and degrading the environment. More than a century after Prosopis juliflora, a shrub, was introduced in Indian soil by the British, scientists are now trying to use its genes to engineer rice varieties that can withstand water scarcity. After coming up with rice grains that are...

-PTI More than 5.5 million people die prematurely each year due to air pollution with over half of those deaths occurring in China and India Washington: More than 5.5 million people die prematurely each year due to air pollution with over half of those deaths occurring in China and India, two of the world’s fastest-growing economies, according to a new research. According to scientists from the US, Canada, China and India, who...

-The Asian Age Is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) a “living monument” of the failure of the economic policies of the Indian National Congress which has ruled the country for all but roughly 14 years since August 1947? Or is it that the MGNREGA, a law enacted a decade ago which seeks to implement the world’s biggest and most ambitious job creating scheme, one of the few...

-The Indian Express We have turned our back to the intense food and drinking water distress across states India has transformed spectacularly in innumerable ways in the last two decades. One of the least noted changes is in the way the country — governments, the press and people — respond to drought and food scarcities. Back in the late-1980s, many states across India were reeling under back-to-back droughts for three consecutive years, not...

-The Hindu The Health Ministry’s plan for a malaria-free India by 2030 is laudable, but grand pronouncements are meaningless as long as manipulated data distort our knowledge and bad governance impedes genuine attempts to fight the disease This month, the Health Ministry will unveil an ambitious new plan to eliminate malaria from the country by 2030. A malaria-free India certainly sounds like a dream, or maybe an early campaign promise: the disease...