With global warming now becoming a permanent fixture in the Indian agriculture landscape, state governments and insurance firms are rushing to provide crop insurance for farmers. Take the case of Rajasthan, which is now looking at extending agri-insurance cover across its 33 districts this year compared to 26 last year. Ditto with Himachal Pradesh and Haryana which would run the Rashtriya Krishi Bima Yojana from this kharif onwards. The cover...

In a dramatic development, the South-West Monsoon has advanced and covered almost the entire country in one swoop in just about 12 hours, barring some areas in Rajasthan. Even as of Sunday evening, the India Meteorological Department had predicted that the monsoon was likely to reach Delhi in a day or two and subsequently the other parts of North India in another two to three days only. But, by Monday morning, the...

Khap-sanctioned honour killings in North India may have hogged all the headlines but such sordid incidents have been reported from all over the country, a recent study has concluded. While there has been a spate of incidents in western Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and Punjab, incidents have also been reported from other parts of the country. "We have been receiving complaints from states like Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand and Andhra...

Farmers across the southwest belt of Haryana and northern Rajasthan have this year sown cotton on a large scale moving away from paddy, the traditional crop in this region. Due to the unavailability of canal water in certain areas in this region, farmers have also moved from sowing Bt cotton to desi (local) cotton which requires less water. The trend has largely been seen in the districts of Fatehabad, Bhiwani,...

Improper storage and negligence continues to damage foodgrain stock of the Food Corporation of India (FCI). In fact, it had about 14,000 tonnes of totally damaged rice, wheat and paddy, which could not be issued for distribution at the start of the year. According to information obtained by RTI activist Dev Ashish Bhattacharya, the nodal government procurement agency had as many as 13,824 tonnes of “non-issuable” foodgrain stock as on January...