-The Indian Express There is a mounting employment crisis in India. The current growth model, built on large private investments, cannot address the problem. Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan raised many hackles with his demand for affirmative action or job reservations for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates in the private sector. He suggested that “providing quota in private jobs will help cool down anger among SC and STs”, thereby stemming...

-PTI NEW DELHI: With bollworm developing resistance to Bt cotton crop, the government has decided to promote cultivation of indigenous varieties of the crop in a big way this year. In 2015-16 crop year (July-June), there was a significant damage to cotton crop because of whitefly and pink bollworm pest attack in states like Haryana, Punjab, Rajashtan, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. Almost 90 per cent of the country's cotton cultivation area is under...

Amidst the prevailing gloominess over agrarian crisis, a recently released report says that the growth rate of Agricultural output in both India and China were the same during 2008-2013. The Agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) of both these countries on an average grew at 3.3 percent per annum during that period. The latest available data from the 2016 Global Food Policy Report, however, indicates that the neighbouring countries of Sri Lanka...

-Down to Earth Participants voice concern on drought, farmers' suicide and water conservation, among other issues The three-day long Kisan Swaraj Sammelan held in Hyderabad (April 1 to 3) urged for the enactment of a Farmers’ Income Guarantee Act to ensure dignified earning levels for Agricultural households among a host of other things. Organised by the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, a group comprising 400 diverse organisations from across India, the...

-Livemint.com Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology says there is a 54% probability that rainfall during the monsoon season this year will be 10 mm-per-day more than normal New Delhi: Weather scientists said they may have spotted signs of a normal, if not a good, rainy season this year, sparking hope among farmers and policymakers alike after two successive bad monsoons. With just three weeks to go for the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD’s) much-awaited...