-The Indian Express Because the GM question demands evidence-based policymaking, not corporate shills or NGO prejudices. Two RSS-affiliated groups, the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch and the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, seem to have successfully petitioned the environment minister to hold off field trials of genetically modified crops. Only a week ago, the statutory body for these decisions, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), had allowed farm trials of rice, mustard, cotton, chickpea and...

-Reuters NEW DELHI: With grain silos spilling over, exports on the rise and an avowed market champion for prime minister, India's threat to trash a global trade deal in the name of food security appears puzzling. But government officials say Prime Minister Narendra Modi is prepared to brazen out global outrage to seize a historic chance to build a rural power base with his defence of farm subsidies and to banish memories...

-The Hindu   An improvement in sanitation and cleanliness will eliminate much of the difference in malnutrition between India and the rest of the world, and across Indian States Historically the greatest advances in longevity and mortality reduction have come not from treatment of individual disease but from public health. This includes modern drainage and sewerage systems (sewage treatment plants), drinking water systems that produce and deliver disease-free water and solid waste disposal...

-The Telegraph Tura: The Meghalaya government is working out modalities to declare horticulture and agriculture yields as "organic certified". Farmers are being encouraged in organic production and the government is assisting in the certification process. Director of the horticulture department Daniel Ingty told The Telegraph, "Nearly 90 per cent farms in Meghalaya are organic by tradition. However, these are yet to be certified. The government has embarked an ambitious programme on mission organic...

-The Hindu It was late afternoon on December 21, 2012, five days after five men and a juvenile gang-raped and fatally assaulted a 23-year-old paramedic student in a moving bus in Delhi. The stream of people walking towards Raisina Hill kept growing. Every few minutes, a loud sound followed by smoke billowing from tear gas shells fired from the towering red sandstone government buildings would send the protesters running. In a...