-ABPLive.in In the midst of the widespread damage to standing crops from unseasonal rains, a National Crop Income Insurance Scheme has been introduced on a pilot basis. What is being perceived as a long-term solution to the prevailing agrarian crisis, and is being pushed as an insurance against weather-related disasters as well as provide an assurance against any income shocks will only end up acerbating the crisis. The cure being suggested is...

-The Indian Express New Delhi: It doesn't get bigger than this, in size, scale and rigour - scientists from one of India's top cancer institutes tracked 11,000 schoolchildren in Delhi for three years. They were drawn from 36 schools, each within 3 km of a pollution-tracking station. This unprecedented study, by the Kolkata-based Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute (CNCI), found that key indicators of respiratory health, lung function to palpitation, vision to blood...

-Livemint.com Model will allow India next year to contribute for the first time to annual report of global climate change panel New Delhi: India has a new and improved climate prediction model, which will help make more accurate long-range forecasts of the erratic monsoon and allow scientists to better study the impact of climate change on the monsoon. The model, developed by researchers at the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM),...

-Tehelka Shamefully, in India, a large percentage of the population still defecates in the open. However, a village in Tamil Nadu has scripted a rare success story by becoming an Open Defecation-Free Village. Nisha Ponthathil documents how the people of Amarambedu near Chennai triumphed over habit with a little help from the civil society Twenty-nine-year-old R Karthick, a resident of Amarambedu village, situated about 65 kilometres away from Tamil Nadu's capital Chennai,...

-The Indian Express The pace of land acquisition, which has been taking place in India since Independence, increased after liberalisation. In more cases than not, it has been successful, that is, both buyer and seller have been satisfied with the outcome. But today, land acquisition is being portrayed as next to impossible. This perception is not based on reality and needs to be changed. The farmer is wrongly being portrayed as...