-The Hindu Business Line   Chemical-intensive agriculture has ravaged our soil quality. History tells us that the consequences could be catastrophic During the 86th birthday celebrations of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that Indian farmers "deserve a standing ovation". However, he reminded the gathered scientists that it was not enough to sit in five-star seminar rooms and analyse why something could not be done; rather, they should...

-The Business Standard Agrarian crisis in the state appears as much a failure of planning as the result of a shortage of rain On a dry and cloudless day this month, Balbir Krishna Ingde sat by the Ujjani Dam in the Krishna basin, one of Maharashtra's largest irrigation projects, and confronted the problem of scarcity amid presumed abundance. "The water is filling up the reservoir. If only they could release it into the...

-India Today Geography of rice and wheat has been transformed with Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh generating surpluses Almost 50 years ago, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri went on air to appeal to Indians to skip a meal a day. Foodgrain supplies had come under strain after the 1965 drought, and the patriotic ethos cautioned against over-consumption: what you ate left that much less for the rest. Today, it is...

-The Telegraph In her recent book, Green Wars, the environmental journalist Bahar Dutt, writes: "The editor of a leading media house, everytime I pitched a green story, would invariably complain: ‘Environmentalism is stalling growth; all I am interested in is double-digit growth for this country.'" The idea that environmental protection and economic progress are at odds is widely held among India's elite. It is shared by newspaper editors, economists, businessmen, and, not...

-The Deccan Herald The poverty line continues to be a conundrum. The fixing of the poverty line at Rs 47 for urban areas and Rs. 32 in rural areas per capita per day by the latest Rangarajan committee report, based on a person or family's spending per day (called ‘consumption expenditure') has again drawn vociferous criticism. All these years, this all important line has not been fixed in a rational manner, rendering...