-The Indian Express The incidence of farmers taking their own lives is higher in regions where cooperative banks are the weakest. Nanded (Maharashtra): The verdant soyabean fields at Digras today are a far cry from the barren landscape they presented only a few months ago. But for residents of this village in Ardhapur taluka of Nanded district, the memories of drought in three out of the last four years will not fade...

-Frontline Medecins Sans Frontieres warns that the free or regional trade agreements that are being negotiated, which seek to strengthen current patent regimes, are a potential threat to the developing world’s access to life-saving drugs, which it sources mostly from India. WHEN NELSON MANDELA’S GOVERNMENT passed the Medicines and Related Substances Control Act in 1997 to make medicines more accessible to the poor, 39 big pharmaceutical companies filed law suits in...

-The Indian Express It has instructed farmers to go for direct purchase from shops where pesticides recommended by PAU and agriculture department are available given at subsidised rates. Ludhiana: AFTER A pesticide purchase scam came to light following failure of cotton crop due to whitefly attack last October, the agriculture department has decided not to purchase any pesticide this year. It has instructed farmers to go for direct purchase from shops where pesticides...

-The Times of India LUCKNOW/ NEW DELHI/ JAIPUR: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his I-Day speech that Nagla Fatela village in Hathras (Mahamayanagar) district of Uttar Pradesh had to wait 70 years to get electricity despite being barely three hours away from the national capital, the state power corporation (UPPCL) and the Union power ministry were battling the veracity of that claim. Senior UPPCL officials on Tuesday insisted...

Rising prices of dal: How to deal with it? The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. In India, however, ordinary citizens are under enormous duress due to the skyrocketing prices of dal/ lentils since the last one year. The website of Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that dal prices varied across places. For example, the...