-DNA The failure of Bt Cotton to ward off pests has pushed farmers to penury The whitefly attack that has devastated the cotton crop in parts of Punjab and Haryana and caused heavy losses to farmers was a disaster that was waiting to happen. Estimates say that some 8 lakh hectare of standing cotton has been destroyed causing damage worth crores of rupees, which has hit farmers hard. This disaster was waiting...

-Down to Earth From providing agricultural information for specific countries to identifying trends in the sector, censuses serve a variety of purpose In the backdrop of a round of country-driven agricultural censuses which will begin in 2016 to gather information and statistics on the global agriculture sector, senior FAO statiscian Jairo Castano discusses with Down To Earth the importance of the exercise. * How helpful are agricultural censuses in gathering information and statistics...

-Down to Earth The rate at which informal housing is being destroyed probably far exceeds the rate at which formal housing is being constructed Troubled by the degradation of environment on and around railway tracks, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) recently directed Delhi government to relocate all illegal settlements along tracks in Delhi. The tribunal reasoned that the residents of these settlements practise open defecation and litter on the tracks. Housing of the...

-The Times of India KOCHI: A corporate group opened its account in an election in India for the first time when its political avatar, tackily named Twenty20, breezed into power in Kizhakkambalam gram panchayat in Kerala, winning 17 of the 19 seats. Congress and Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) won the other two seats while the Left drew a blank. Twenty20 became widely popular in Kizhakkambalam, a village situated 22km from...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Jean Dreze, eminent economist and a former member of the National Advisory Council during the UPA regime, was dropped from a high profile economics conference organized by the finance ministry.  Dreze, who has been critical of some of the measures of the NDA government, was invited to speak at the Delhi Economics Conclave on Friday.  "This is the invitation I received and accepted some time ago. On...