-The Hindu Increase productivity without compromising on ecology: Swaminathan Sangareddy (Andhra Pradesh): Renowned agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan opined that the proposed loan waiver for farmers in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh should not be like a patronage and instead it should bring them out of the debt trap. Addressing a gathering and later the media at International Crops Research Institute for Semi- Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) at Patancheru on Monday after being named ICRISAT...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: "Is there andhergardi (lawlessness) in this country," an angry Supreme Court asked after being told by the Naveen Patnaik government that unlicensed labour contractors chopped off the palms of two migrant labourers' after the tribal men they had herded for contract labour in brick kilns managed to flee. Counsel Jayshree Satpute and R S Jena narrated the unending exploitation of tribal men in six districts of...

-PTI New Delhi: Rising prices of rice in the open market prompted households to reduce consumption and rely on ration shops to buy it at controlled rate, shows a government survey. According to the NSSO survey, Indian families consumed less rice in 2011-12 but their purchases of the commodity under Public Distribution System (PDS) doubled in villages and rose by 66 percent in cities. The monthly per capita rice consumption in villages was...

-Down to Earth India ranked 19th among 45 developing countries assessed by UK-based organisation India has made quite some progress in countering hunger and under-nutrition in the past two years but Nepal and Bangladesh have done better and have shown serious commitment through political will, says the Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI) report, 2013. The annual HANCI report, prepared by non-profit Institute of Development Studies and International Food Policy Research Institute funded...

-Deccan Herald The National Crime Records Bureau's data for 2013 is out, and farm suicides are pegged at 11,772 -- not very different from the earlier years.Many activists point out how these figures are in fact under-reported. In a country where the cultivators' numbers are plummeting drastically as the Census 2011 data shows, this unabated trend of farm suicides is something that any government should take note of. The central aspect to this...