A new report by National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) reveals that despite the nutritional value of millets, otherwise known as coarse cereals*, there has been a drastic reduction in the area under its cultivation from 36.34 million hectares in 1955-56 to 18.6 million hectares in 2011-12 thanks to the wrong agricultural and price policies adopted by the Government (see table 1, and the links below). Based on previous National...
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India’s SO2 emissions up by 71 per cent in 5 years, shows US study -Aparna Pallavi
-Down to Earth 'CPCB underestimating pollution from coal-fired thermal power plants' Data released by NASA's Aura satellite calls into question the veracity of Central Pollution Control Board's (CPCB) claim made in 2012 that the mean sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions in India decreased in 2010 as compared to 2001 level. A new study led by Zifeng Lu of Decision and Information Sciences Division of Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, USA, based on images...
More »Referred to die -Sayantan Bera
-Down to Earth Infant deaths in West Bengal’s only super specialty hospital underscrore an urgent need to improve healthcare facilities in rural areas SUPER SPECIALTY B C Roy Children’s Hospital in Kolkata looks like a refugee camp. A sit-out for families inside the complex is roofed with plastic in bright shades of blue, red and green. The sheets protect families from the regular monsoon downpour. The not-so-lucky ones huddle under buildings when...
More »Planet racing towards 2°C temperature rise: UN report -Subodh Varma
-The Times of India The report issued on September 27 by the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) may sound similar to the one issued five years ago - after all, it says that humanity is causing climate change, though with more certainty. But on two key aspects this report has categorically said what was never said before. The first is that the carbon accumulation in the atmosphere and resulting global...
More »Santhali women caught between birth and death—sans medical help -Anumeha Yadav
-The Hindu Sundarpahari (Jharkhand): In Santhali villages in Godda, along Jharkhand's border with Bihar, many slanting stone megaliths that mark the community graves are those of young women who died in childbirth in recent years. Tribal families in the hamlets scattered in Sundarpahari and Poreyhat - many of whom speak only Santahli - recount desperate struggles for medical help when young women in their families in advanced stages of pregnancy experienced...
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