-TheWire.in The government should keep the secretary of the health department unchanged for three years for him/her to be able to show results. But that has not been happening. The NDA government had promised good governance and policy stability. Yet we have a fourth secretary in the health department in the last three years – the seventh in the last seven years. Since both the outgoing and the incoming officers have sterling...

-The Hindu Member nations have basis of agreement: UNCTAD official An agreement on elimination of ‘harmful’ fisheries subsidies is likely to be the only major outcome at the forthcoming meeting of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) highest decision-making body called the ‘Ministerial Conference’, according to the head of the principal United Nations (UN) agency handling issues related to trade, investment and development. On what could probably be among the ‘deliverables’ at the WTO’s...

-IndiaClimateDialogue.net In north Bihar, where floods devastate standing crops with increasing regularity in an era of climate change, a marginalised community is fighting all odds to protect an indigenous flood-resistant variety of rice. Sahorwa village is caught between the embankments of two major rivers in north Bihar. Between the Kosi river’s western embankment and Kamla Balan river’s eastern embankment, this village of 110 Musahar families remains flooded for seven to eight months...

-DNA India India is frittering away gains of the Green Revolution and fast turning into a net food importer In 2015-16, India imported Rs 1,402,680,000,000 or 1.40 lakh crore worth of agricultural commodities. This was more than three times the annual budgetary allocation for domestic agriculture. Well, if you think the increasing reliance on food imports in one year — 2015-16 — is merely an aberration, hold your breath. According to commodity...

-NetworkIdeas.org A slew of numbers released recently point to rather peculiar and contrary trends in India’s balance of payments. Exports have revived but the trade and current account deficits widen, pointing to an excess of foreign exchange expenditure relative to earnings. While the widening current account deficit points to a weakening balance of payments position, foreign exchange reserves are at record levels. The foreign exchange reserve increase is funded largely by capital...