The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is facilitating the visits of representatives from several developing countries to witness India's amazing election exercise under South-South cooperation. Representatives from Lesotho, Nigeria, Malaysia and Namibia are already in India and have visited polling booths and electoral offices in various states of India including West Bengal and Karnataka. For inquiries or interviews, please contact Ms. Nandita Surendran-UNDP, phone no. +919810084776, Email: nandita.surendran@undp.org. Journalists and media...

-Deccan Herald   Chennai: Once the source of her livelihood, the farmland 51-year-old Vellamal owns in Kallupatti village near Tamil Nadu's Karur district has gone completely dry in the last one year due to monsoon failure. The rapidly depleting groundwater forced her to abandon agriculture and Vellamal, left high and dry, signed up to Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). Now, the scheme feeds her entire family. As Deccan Herald toured...

-The Hindu Business Line   Technology is transforming Indian agriculture and increasing output. This is good news, given that India may need to produce 90 million tonnes of foodgrain annually by 2030 to feed its growing population, says Vishwanath Kulkarni Jitendra, a prosperous farmer from Machrauli in Haryana, had barely hired a combine to harvest wheat on his 10-acre plot when clouds started building up. The weather office had predicted rains over the...

-The Business Standard   Higher judiciary has not addressed the delays in India's courts Continuing what will be a year of quick personnel changes for the higher judiciary, a new chief justice of India, R M Lodha, has taken office. Justice Lodha will have only a five-month tenure. It will be difficult for him to introduce any far-reaching reform in this period. His initial speech after being sworn in must have been written...

-Down to Earth   People of West Bengal's Sunderbans region are setting up grain banks to safeguard against food crisis Subedan Bibi's mud hut is a few metres from the banks of the Bakchara river, a distributary of the Hugli in Sunderbans region of South 24 Parganas. When the river is in spate she and most others of Goyadham village move to the main market in the nearby block. "Floods and storms destroy...