-Livemint.com Telangana 9th state to declare drought, adding to the agrarian crisis and posing a threat to the rural economy New Delhi: Telangana has declared a drought in parts of the state, becoming the ninth state this year to do so, highlighting the agrarian crisis that could cause a likely fall in the production of rain-fed crops such as pulses, oilseeds and cotton, and result in a further slowing of the...

-Hindustan Times During his town hall address at IIT Delhi, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: “Those who don’t have access to the internet cannot sign online petitions.” But how can he decide what is best for them? Recent research by Amba Kak at the Oxford Internet Institute found that financially constrained users prefer buying shorter duration Internet plans (e.g. three days) with all access, as opposed to WhatsApp-only plans that are...

-The Hindu India’s strategy at the Paris Climate Change summit will be to work with emerging economies and press the developed world to concede that responsibility for cutting carbon emissions after 2020 cannot be shared equally by rich and Poor nations. Two major issues that New Delhi will focus on at the Conference of the Parties (CoP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are failed ambitions on transferring low...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A new study has found time spent on domestic chores can impact education. Data collected from 952 children and their communities in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana has shown that 12-year-olds who spend three hours or more on household chores in a day are 70% less likely to complete secondary education. These findings came to light after Renu Singh and Protap Mukherjee studied data gathered through the...

-The Indian Express The reality of rural distress is sinking in only now for policymakers. There can be no better illustration of the vagaries of the weather than Chennai’s streets being inundated with water and the second India-South Africa cricket test in Bangalore suffering washout due to rains, even as drought stalks much of the country. That really is the case today, with Tamil Nadu, Kerala, southern and coastal Karnataka, Rayalaseema...