-The Hindu They will soon become more than just a political liability The BJP’s poor performance in the recent Assembly elections underscores the extent of India’s agrarian distress and the political cost of failing to address it. The root cause of the Indian farmer’s woes is water shortage. Yet, barring policy interventions, this problem will only worsen — to the point that it will become far more serious than a mere political...

Passionate about the deepening of agrarian crisis, quite often journalists and media persons cite figures related to farm suicide (as provided by the National Crime Records Bureau) in order to draw the attention of the readers. They do so in the following ways: * Compare the absolute number of farm suicides (viz. suicide by cultivators + suicide by agricultural labourers) across regions/ states for a particular time point or time period...

Just a few days ahead of the Kisan Mukti March in Delhi NCR, the provisional results of the Agriculture Census 2015-16 became available in the public domain. The report, among other things, highlights the long-term problems affecting Indian agriculture including fragmentation of land holdings (particularly the marginal and small ones) and shrinking average size of farm land. The provisional results of the latest Agriculture Census reveal that at the national level...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: With the national capital staring at an alarming situation of reaching zero groundwater level by 2020, the Delhi government on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that it has prepared a time-bound action plan to revive 201 of the 1,011 identified waterbodies in the state to avert the looming crisis. Appearing before a bench of Madan B Lokur, S Abdul Nazeer and Deepak Gupta, Delhi government counsel...

-The Hindu Business Line Every search by energy-consuming data centres leaves carbon footprint New Delhi: Most of our days start with replying to messages on social messaging platforms and probably end with viewing videos on Netflix, but do we realise these activities contribute to climate change? According to studies on climate change, data centres account for about 3 per cent of the total electricity consumed globally. Every search leaves a carbon footprint of...