-Hindustan Times Prioritise universal access of food grains since those dying of starvation are mainly the marginalised Forty-four-year-old mother, Amir Jahan, epitomised gallantry this Republic Day. There was not a morsel of food at home. So, while the nation celebrated, she quietly borrowed six rotis from a neighbour and distributed them equally among her three daughters, though she hadn’t eaten for four days. That night Amir died of starvation. In the first month...

-Scroll.in The proposed law is almost identical to the United Progressive Alliance’s 2008 Pesticide Management Bill. Months after more than 40 people in three States were reported to have died in the second half of 2017 after being exposed to spurious pesticides, the Bharatiya Janata Party government has begun consultations on a new Pesticides Management Bill. The deaths in rural Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Telangana highlighted the fact that the Insecticides Act...

-Down to Earth The protests are in opposition to the vague position of the Rules on forest-dwelling communities in the compensatory afforestation process The draft Compensatory Afforestation Fund Rules, 2018, notified by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) on February 16, have sparked protests by tribal organisations in Odisha. The protests are due to the fact that the Rules are vague on the role of communities in...

-PTI The Punjab government had earlier faced the wrath of the tribunal for not taking effective steps to provide financial assistance and infrastructure facility to the farmers to encourage them not to burn agricultural residue. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday directed Delhi and four northern States to formulate a comprehensive policy for providing incentives and infrastructural assistance to farmers to stop them from burning crop residue to prevent air pollution. The...

-Down to Earth What is the use of strategy when no special budget was allocated to double farmers’ income, says a senior NITI Aayog official anonymously In a two-day closed door meeting on doubling farmers’ income, the government claimed that there is no lack of funds to implement a seven-point strategy devised to double farmers’ income by 2022. The national conference, Agriculture 2022 - Doubling Farmers’ Income, which ends today, hosts sessions...