-The Hindu Business Line Fewer straw-management machines were given out than had been sanctioned In Punjab most farmers have their homes right in the middle of their farms. When they clear their field in October to prepare for sowing wheat, they burn the rice stalks left in the field and their homes remain engulfed by smog for weeks. So, if there is an alternative to crop burning, farmers will only be...

-The Hindu Business Line India’s over-dependence on private players for vaccines is promoting irrational use and restricting access that leads to unacceptable fatalities The death of an eight-year-old girl, Anju, this August after denial of anti-rabies vaccine at Agra’s Sarojini Naidu Medical College (SNMC) is followed by the admission by Health Ministry that fatality rate for rabies in India is 100 per cent. Although the circumstance of Anju’s death is particularly Kafkaesque...

-Hindustan Times On Friday, Business Standard released leaked findings from the 2017-18 CES which showed that inflation-adjusted average monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) declined by 3.7% in the country between 2011-12 and 2017-18, a first in four decades. The ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MOSPI) has decided “not to release the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) results of 2017-2018” in view of “data quality issues”, it said in a statement. On Friday,...

-The Hindu Business Line Mumbai: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s advice to State governments to dismantle the Agricultural Produce Market Committees and move on to eNAM (electronic National Agriculture Market) has raised many eyebrows as the three-year-old nascent online platform is still facing teething troubles. Addressing the sixth World Congress on Rural and Agricultural Finance earlier this week, Sitharaman said, “I want to place emphasis on eNAM. We are trying to get the...

-Hindustan Times As per district agriculture department, around 15 farmers of Sangrur have adopted organic farming over 50 acres land in the district with different crops such as wheat, paddy, sugarcane and vegetables. The sowing season of wheat has begun in the state Chandigarh: Amid serious threats to human health and environment due to the use of pesticides and fertilisers, some progressive farmers of Sangrur have chosen to produce organic wheat on...