-Kafila.org Dear Prime Minister Modi ji, We, the undersigned, wish to share with you some of our concerns on India's position on intellectual property (IP), particularly in the context of bilateral relations between the United States of America and India. We gather from the US-India Joint Statement dated 30 September 2014 that the Indian Government (a)greeing on the need to foster innovation in a manner that promotes economic growth...

-Deccan Herald In accordance with a new agroecology initiative within the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, by using the agroecological methods, small farmers are key to feeding the world, Nafeez Ahmed notes. Modern industrial agricultural methods can no longer feed the world, due to the impacts of overlapping environmental and ecological crises linked to land, water and resource availability. The stark warning comes from the new United Nations Special Rapporteur on the...

-The Indian Express This July, I spoke with a farmer in Angul district, Odisha. During the kharif season, most of his 45-acre farm is devoted to paddy, but during the rabi season, he grows a variety of pulses, oilseeds and vegetables. He is currently president of the village watershed committee, working to implement an impressive programme to halt soil erosion and water runoff. He pointed out newly constructed contour and farm...

-The Telegraph A swathe of land stretching from the Himalayan foothills to the Indo-Gangetic plains has experienced a steady and significant decrease in water stored in lakes, reservoirs, rivers and as groundwater over the past decade, government scientists have said. Scientists at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting here and their collaborators in other institutions have found that the terrestrial water storage (TWS) - a measure of surface and underground...

-The Hindu Business Line The number of people commuting between rural and urban areas and across geographies has risen dramatically In the last couple of decades, the number of people commuting between rural and urban areas on a daily basis has seen an explosive growth. This includes unskilled workers without a fixed place of work. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation, between 1993-94 and 2009-10, India saw a nearly fourfold increase (from...