-PTI NEW DELHI: Around 20 million tonnes of wheat is wasted in India every year due to inadequate storage infrastructure, Institution of Mechanical Engineers said today. "Foodgrains are lost in India mainly due to lack of facilities in storage and transportation. 20 million tonnes of wheat is lost every year as a result of that," said Tim Fox, Head of Environment at the UK-based body. He released the report, 'Global Food: Waste not,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Union Environment ministry has issued an order keeping in abeyance the controversial August, 2007 notification, which allows import of genetically modified (GM) processed food items into India without its prior permission, till March 31, 2014. Though the ministry has continuously been keeping the notification in abeyance since February 2008, this time it has opted for a shorter period - usually it used to be a...

-Institute of Economic Growth This paper focusses on two Indian laws that seek to guarantee socioeconomic rights: the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), an important example of India's recent history of legislation of social and economic rights, and the proposed National Food Security Act (NFSA), currently in Parliament. Various means of democratic politics, including a ten-year old public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court and public mobilisation through the...

-The Times of India India must discuss phasing down hydrofluorocarbons which endanger the planet. In September, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama agreed to discuss how hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are hundreds to thousands of times more potent global warming compounds than carbon dioxide, could be phased down. They agreed, bilaterally and at the G20 summit, to use the expertise and institutions of the Montreal Protocol and report emissions under...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The Environment ministry has set up an expert group, as mandated by the Supreme Court, to determine whether hydropower projects along Alaknanda and Bhagirathi rivers and their tributaries contributed to Environmental degradation, an effort to ensure there is no repeat of the Uttarakhand disaster witnessed earlier this year. Headed by Ravi Chopra, member of National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) and director of People's Science Institute,...