-TheWire.in Veteran IAS officers agree there is a need for greater specialisation in the civil services, but are unhappy with the cut in recruitments over the years and the move to bypass the UPSC system. New Delhi: The Centre’s move to allow lateral entry into empanelled bureaucracy has opened up a complex debate that has been ongoing for, at least, the last two decades. While a big chunk of the civil servants...

-The Hindu Clause on listing ingredients dropped. A group of Indian pesticide manufacturers says that the proposed Pesticides Management Bill, which is likely to be finalised this month, will harm both farmers and the domestic industry by not making it mandatory for the active ingredients of pesticides to be revealed in the registration process. “The draft Bill will allow importers to register readymade products without registering the active ingredients,” said Pradip Dave, President...

-The Hindu The court-ordered clean-up in the textile town has managed to mitigate ill-effects of industrial pollution to a large extent. A similar remediation effort, involving the government and stakeholders, is needed in other parts of Tamil Nadu, where groundwater has been so contaminated that farming is not possible anymore On a sunny June morning, two men are spotted fishing close to the Orathupalayam dam in Erode district. A rather ordinary act in...

-The Indian Express Records show that of the 3,59,745 claims for Individual Forest Rights (IFR) submitted under the law that came into force in 2006, 2,24,874 claims, or 62.5 per cent, were rejected in a three-tier process involving local bodies. Mumbai: More than 62 per cent of claims filed by tribals for individual land titles in Maharashtra under the Forest Rights Act have been rejected, according to data compiled till March 31,...

-The Indian Express The result in the Kairana Lok Sabha seat bypoll, where ganna payment was the main issue, brought forth a crisis born of advances in plant breeding and boost in sugarcane production. Not many would have heard of Bakshi Ram. Currently director of the Sugarcane Breeding Institute (SBI) at Coimbatore, he isn’t as well-known as Norman Borlaug or M S Swaminathan. Yet, the wonder sugarcane variety, Co-0238, bred by...