-The Hindu Leading hydrogeology scientist explains how India’s dependence on groundwater could lead to a crisis if left unchecked Mumbai: Groundwater is the world’s most extracted raw material, supplying and sustaining a range of human activity. Yet, because it is invisible and it’s supply often taken for granted, it is often inadequately acknowledged in policy and debates about the preservation of groundwater commons and aquifers. At best, it is usually shrouded in...

-The Times of India BENGALURU: India may be home to 15% of the global livestock population, but its contribution to the global methane emissions by the domesticated animals is only 10.63%, a study by the National Institute of Animal Nutrition and Physiology (NIANP) has revealed. Cows, buffaloes, sheep and goats are the huge contributors to methane emissions. Methane, released primarily by livestock, paddy cultivation, decay of organic waste in landfill sites and...

-The Hindu Information has not graduated to storytelling to dent the regime’s idea of agricultural policy I remember years ago the Delhi School of Economics had many great scholars visit the campus. They talked passionately and knowledgeably not just about the subject but about knowledge as a vocation. One of the most memorable of these performances was by Teodor Shanin, the economic historian who also edited Peasants and Peasant Societies. He talked...

-The Hindu Barrier-free tributaries flowing in can mitigate the effect, factoring in high-impact projects A new study has found that dams and other barriers across rivers in the Western Ghats do affect fish species and their recovery downstream. However, barrier-free tributaries that drain in to these rivers can help fish recover even in dammed stretches; protecting such tributaries could be crucial to maintaining fish diversity in the Western Ghats. The Western Ghats is...

-Hindustan Times Madhya Pradesh’s Babulal Dahiya is a collector of folk songs and seeds and has sown 110 varieties of rice to preserve them. Bhopal: He is a collector of folk songs and seeds. And it was while collecting Bagheli folklore, this 72-year-old farmer cum Bagheli poet realized that saving folk songs and sayings won’t mean much if the local crop varieties, which repeatedly crop up in the folk literature, are...