-IPS News Bhubaneswar: More than a month after Cyclone Phailin battered Orissa, tribes in the eastern Indian coastal state are still feeling its wrath. Besides the damage to their homes and hearths, it has also meant a loss of their traditional food. "Calamities like Cyclone Phailin affect all equally, but the tribes are far more vulnerable to the impact of calamities because of lesser resilience," Special Relief Commissioner P.K. Mahapatra tells IPS. This...

-Down to Earth A Kerala village grows organic pokkali rice after 25 years Harvest of pokkali rice in Kerala's Ezhupunna village, which began on October 27 and lasted three weeks, was nothing short of a local event. After all, the indigenous, saline and flood-resistant rice variety was cultivated in the village after 25 years. People in the village had to wage a long battle to be able to cultivate the crop once...

-Outlook Multilateral lending agency Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide loan of USD 2 billion annually for five years till 2017 to India to create jobs, enhance investment reforms, and improve infrastructure. "The ADB and Government of India have agreed to a new country partnership strategy for 2013-2017 which supports the country's 12th Five Year Plan .... The strategy comes with a financial envelope of around USD 10 billion...," the Manila based...

-The Economic Times If I say today that I am ready to supply onions, in an improvised form, at Rs 20/kg home delivered, and round the year, people may think either I have gone crazy or I am dipping into the general exchequer to pull off a massive subsidy scheme for onions. Wrong. I will make a cool profit of 15 to 20% in this deal, do a great service to...

-The Hindustan Times Mumbai: Indian companies have acquired land more than nine times the size of Delhi on foreign shores, as cultivable land at home is lost to urbanisation, industry and infrastructure projects. Land Matrix, a global land monitoring initiative that tracks land dealings worldwide, placed India among the top 10 countries that have acquired large tracts of land abroad, primarily for agriculture, in Africa and Asia. The country ranks eighth,...