India does not have enough surplus stocks of foodgrains for exports in the short-term and the country needs to boost its farm production significantly, to meet the expected rise in domestic demand by 2020, a top official of FCI said on Wednesday. "The country has adequate stock of foodgrains to meet our needs...there is not much surplus availability of the food grains for export in the short-term," Food Corporation of...
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25 years of Save Narmada Movement
Has Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), one of India’s best-known peoples’ movements, run out of steam? Or is it still relevant in its new avatar as a force to reckon with? After all, the NBA has failed to achieve its primary goal of blocking big dams on Narmada, including the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat. The short answer to the question of NBA’s achievement is that it has forced a paradigm...
More »New Arrivals Strain India’s Cities to Breaking Point by Lydia Polgreen
Mahitosh Sarkar came here from his distant village in West Bengal 12 years ago looking for a better life, and he found it. He abandoned the penniless existence of a subsistence fisherman to become a big-city vegetable seller. His wife found work as a maid. Their four children went to school. Their tiny household, a grim but weather-tight room in a dilapidated tenement, had a color TV and a satellite...
More »Rural India's swift digital TV embrace by Sharmistha Mukherjee
Digital TV penetration in rural India is three-fold higher than in urban areas, says a report compiled by the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) on the pay TV sector. Though nearly 80 per cent of households in urban areas have television sets, more than double the 38 per cent in rural areas, the adoption of technology has been much faster in the latter. Digital TV penetration is 34 per cent in rural...
More »Too much fertiliser use has ruined soil health: study by Vineeta Pandey
The indiscriminate use of fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides over the years has led to deterioration of soil quality and crop productivity in India. According to a study conducted by the central soil water conservation research and training institute (CSWCRTI), Dehra Dun, about 1 millimetre of top soil is lost every year due to erosion. This leads to a total soil loss of 5,334 million tonnes annually, at an average rate...
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