-The Indian Express Information was collected on a range of parameters at the individual and household levels like occupation, education, disability, religion, SC/ST status and employment. Nearly one in every three rural households still have an uncertain source of income and continue to live in one-room kutcha houses, according to the findings of the first national Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC). Officials told The Indian Express that these households — 31.26 per...

-The Indian Express According to government data, percentage of households without toilets in Odisha is an alarming 88 per cent. Odisha and Bihar, two states which have consistently demanded a special category status from the Centre on account of being backward, figure among the worst states in India when it comes to household toilets. According to the Baseline Survey – 2012 report of the Swachh Bharat Mission under the aegis of the Ministry...

  If environmental degradation disturbs you and you are averse to reading technical manuals and copious volumes on the subject, there is some good news for you.    A recently published book from Gene Campaign entitled Coping with Climate Change is doing the rounds among environmentalists, civil society activists, public servants and researchers. Edited by Dr. Suman Sahai, the book has been written in a coffee book style to make easy serious...

-The Hindu Suicides decrease with increasing farm size and yield, but increase with the area under Bt Cotton’. The cultivation of Bt cotton, a genetically modified, insect-resistant cotton variety, is a risky affair for Indian farmers practising rain-fed agriculture, according to a latest study published by California-based agricultural scientists in the journal Environmental Sciences Europe. Annual suicide rates of farmers in rain-fed areas are directly related to increase in Bt cotton adoption, say...

-The Hindu Business Line Not the RBI, going by the revised priority sector lending norms, which will further reduce credit to the marginalised Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often expressed his sense of anguish at the plight of farmers. In a recent statement in the Lok Sabha, he noted that the agriculture community’s problems were “old, deep-rooted and widespread”, and stated that farmers cannot be left to fend for themselves. Implicit in that...