-The Hindu The avian flu virus was first detected in migratory birds in New Delhi Jaipur: After deaths of migratory birds due to avian flu were reported in Delhi, an alert was sounded in Rajasthan over the weekend, asking authorities and the public at large to keep a watch on the health of birds and take precautionary measures to check the likely outbreak of bird flu in the State. A communiqué received by...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Sureme Court today sought responses from the Centre and six states on a public interest petition seeking a ban on cow vigilante groups across the country. These states are Gujarat -where cow vigilantes' public flogging of four Dalit men in July sparked a countrywide furore - Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. Maharashtra-based social activists and Congress sympathisers Tehseen Poonawala and his brother Shehzad Poonawala had moved...

-Scroll.in / qz.com The government has set up five committees to review data to calculate major indicators such as the GDP, IIP and inflation. More than 19 months after the statistical tumult began over India’s GDP, the Narendra Modi government is finally trying to fix the mess. India’s GDP numbers have been receiving flak since a new calculation was introduced in January 2015. Overnight, India’s GDP growth accelerated from 4.7% to 6.9%. It...

-HardNewsMedia.com A lack of jobs and an abundant workforce have meant that the agrarian states of India have become tinderboxes waiting to catch fire Statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s annual report, “Crime in India”, reveal that in 2015, the number of ‘agrarian riots’ have increased by a whopping 327 percent. The number of cases of ‘agrarian rioting’ increased from 628 to 2,683 in one year. The bulk of...

Expanding irrigation network in the country is considered as essential to raise agricultural production in the face of increased frequency of droughts. However, a newly released report from the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare shows that there has actually been a fall in the growth rate of net irrigated area during the recent two decades. The report entitled State of Indian Agriculture 2015-16 reveals that the growth rate in...