-The Times of India KOLKATA: A potato glut and plunging prices have triggered suicides in Bengal's Hooghly, Burdwan and Bankura districts. Hooghly alone reported six of them. Prices have crashed, one kg of the tuber selling for Rs 3 to Rs 4. With the pressure unlikely to ease in the near future, peasants face an uncertain future and are agitating. In 2013, Bengal's farmers reaped a good harvest of 85 lakh tonnes...
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Call for ‘mission mode’ to tackle arsenic contamination
-The Hindu Expressing serious concern over the extent of arsenic contamination in groundwater that has affected nearly 70 million people in 86 districts across 10 States, a Parliamentary panel led by senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi has favoured "mission mode'' approach by the Centre to deal with the problem. Dr. Joshi tabled the first report of the Committee on Estimates on ‘Occurrence of High Arsenic Content in Ground Water' in...
More »Sunderbans' water getting toxic: Scientists -Sahana Ghosh
-IANS Kolkata: Climate change is causing toxic metals trapped in the sediment beds of the Hooghly estuary in the Indian Sunderbans to leach out into the water system due to changes in ocean chemistry, say scientists, warning of potential human health hazards. They predict that after about 30 years, increasing ocean acidification - another dark side of spiked atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide - could in fact unlock the entire stock of...
More »Groundwater in 81 blocks contaminated in West Bengal
-The Hindu Kolkata (West Bengal): Of the 341 blocks in the State, 81 blocks have water with more arsenic than the permissible limit and 49 blocks with more fluoride than the standard value. North 24 Parganas district, where about 20 blocks are affected with arsenic contamination, is the worst affected and is followed by Nadia, where 17 blocks and Murshidabad with 14 blocks where arsenic in groundwater is higher than the limit. Certain...
More »Music-making shells-Amrita Ghosh
-The Telegraph Bottle gourd shells, used to make traditional musical instruments like sitar and tanpura, are no longer grown by the farmers in Howrah, reports Amrita Ghosh West Bengal: Its not without reason that "shader lau..." is the most popular folk song in parts of rural Bengal, including Howrah. "Lau" or bottle gourd, as the folk song goes, turns a man into a vagrant as he eats its base and its top...
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