Visitors making their way along the muddy track leading to the Gossainbarie tea estate in India's north-eastern Assam state will be greeted by huge mounds of cow dung, rotting water hyacinth, as well as and fish and meat waste. But this is no cause for alarm - the tea-estate has gone organic and is following the principles of India's ancient plant medicine Vriksh Ayurveda. "This is our fertiliser because we don't...

To the price-hit common man, food inflation easing from nearly 20 per cent to a little above 16 per cent is a statistical mirage. And the president's call for a "second Green Revolution" will seem talk in the air. Politicians, nonetheless, are battling each other instead of high prices. Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar has faced opposition snipers and the Congress's friendly fire. Tackling prices, he retorts, is the government's collective...

DINDIGUL: People visiting the farmers market at NGO Colony near here will soon get an opportunity to buy traditional rural food items and homemade products besides vegetables. It would become a single point shopping centre for consumers, said Collector M. Vallalar. He was presiding over a function that marked the concluding day of 10th anniversary of the farmers’ market at NGO Colony here on Wednesday. Selling all items including groceries, masala items...

CITIES MAKE one simple promise to newcomers: Sacrifice yourself to me and your children shall prosper. This promise drew Ahmed Raza, a small-time wrestler from an Uttar Pradesh village and millions like him to the capital of newly-independent India. Raza kept his part of the bargain, yet half a century later, his daughter was pushed out of the city her father helped build, the only home she has known. “I...

Rajasthan government is planning to set up 450 generic medicines stores across the state. Rajasthan medical and health minister Aimaduddin Ahmad 'Duru Miyan' said that the state government is serious on providing affordable quality health care in the state. The prescription of generic medicines by doctors would “pierce the cartel of big manufacturers†and reduce the drug prices. The state government will also get grant from ministry of chemicals and...