-Down to Earth Faced with crop losses because of erratic rainfall and extreme weather, tribal farmers of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh turn to bewar and penda forms of cultivation that keeps them nourished all times of the year, but government agencies are bent on rooting out these farm practices Hariaro Bai Deoria should have been a worried person this year-an untimely spell of rain late last October flattened her paddy crop, and...

-The Hindu Drop attributed to devastation by three successive cyclones ELURU (Andhra Pradesh): West Godavari district registered a sharp decline in the yield of paddy in kharif. The trend is attributed to the extensive damage caused by a series of three cyclones, one after the other. The crop cutting experiments undertaken by the Agriculture Department estimated the yield to be around 8.67 lakh tonnes, against the initial expectations of 12.36 lakh tonnes....

-Down to Earth   Scientists in Bihar find a plausible link between pesticides and breast cancer "There were no apparent risk factors. I had no family history of breast cancer, married early, had a baby whom I breastfed. Above all, I followed a healthy lifestyle. The only thing that could have led to my cancer could be environmental factors-exposure to pesticide residues through food and pollution," narrated Niti, a young breast cancer survivor,...

-The Week Telangana leader claims he is making astronomical profits from capsicum farming Telangana: Not many politicians who own land are farmers. But Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K. Chandrasekhara Rao is different. While he ensures Telangana remains a burning issue, Rao is also busy growing capsicum, potato, bitter gourd, and bottle gourd. The capsicum crop itself, he claims, will fetch him Rs.10 crore. His claim of huge returns and promise of land...

-The Times of India VARANASI: In an extremely cold and shivering night, a man with torn clothes was eating something picked up from a dustbin at platform number 4 of Charbagh railway station of Lucknow. Some passenger may have thrown the leftover eatable. But, finding it insufficient to satiate his hunger the man started looking for some more stuff in other dustbins at the platform. When this correspondent tried to interact with...