-PTI After a making a slow progress, the southwest monsoon is expected to gain momentum and advance further into several parts of drought-hit Maharashtra and central India. “The southwest monsoon has further advanced into remaining parts of coastal Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Gangetic West Bengal, more parts of north interior Karnataka, Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Jharkhand and Bihar,” the India Meteorological Department said. Secretary in the Ministry of Earth Sciences, M Rajeevan, said the last...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A month has gone by since the Supreme Court issued directions to tackle drought but it is "business as usual" for the Centre and the affected states, civil society organisations have said. Worse, government intervention is even less than what it used to be in colonial times, they said. A quarter of the country is drought-hit at present. On May 11, the apex court had pronounced the Centre guilty...

-The Times of India Sometimes it's pricey onions driving consumers to tears, at other times, potatoes or pulses. But this summer is different. A triple whammy of scorching tomato and potato prices, alongside pulses — arhar and urad — has wrecked family budgets. In the last two years, arhar prices have doubled while those of urad have increased by around 120%. Even gram (chana dal), which is produced in large quantities and...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Government scientists have called for nationwide surveillance to look for a caterpillar native to South America that has slipped into at least four Indian states and could threaten the country's tomato growers and the ketchup-and-puree industries. The scientists at the National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources (NBAIR), Bangalore, worried about the pest's spread, have also initiated efforts to get wasps and predatory bugs to serve as its natural...

-Livemint.com IMD has advised farmers in interior Maharashtra, Marathwada and Vidarbha not to begin sowing as the soil is heated and the seeds require rainfall New Delhi: With the progress of the monsoon slowing over Karnataka, India Meteorological Department(IMD) has advised farmers in Maharashtra to postpone sowing seeds until the rains reach the state in the next four to five days. “The Konkan region is getting pre-monsoon rains and will soon get monsoon...