-The Hindu Instead, they tell parliamentary panel to improve access to education to delay marriages An umbrella body of child rights organisations set up by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, which appeared before the parliamentary panel studying the Bill on raising the age of marriage for women to 21 from 18 years, has opposed the move and emphasised the need to improve access to education to delay marriages. The India Child Protection Forum [ICPF]...

-Down to Earth Farmers are being pushed to suicide amid market shortage   Chilli farmers in Telangana’s Subakkapalli village, Bhopalapalli district, are living their worst nightmare. A new pest, black thrips (Thrips parvispinus), has destroyed over 40 hectares (ha) of standing crop in a matter of months. In Sidduri Ravindra Rao’s farm, the initial signs of the attack were reported in the first week of December last year. He increased the frequency of...

-TheWire.in * According to the Union health ministry’s new Rural Health Statistics report, for 2020-2021, primary health centres have a surplus of doctors. * This could be true – although there are doubts about whether the report included the number of doctors on transitory, ad hoc appointments as well. * The report fails to capture the qualitative aspects of doctors’ availability at PHCs, including a hidden problem motivated by the absence of sufficient...

-Newsclick.in Production has dipped for the first time in the Modi era and procurement has plummeted, bringing wheat stocks down and affecting foodgrain-based schemes. The Narendra Modi-led Central government is going to be confronted with a crisis that it has never faced yet – shortage of wheat, one of India’s key staples. The worry about this looming cloud is aggravated by the fact that the Modi government has not been particularly successful...

-Financial Express The third advance estimate of wheat production by the agriculture ministry is expected to be released this month. Heatwave conditions since the middle of March have caused significant damage to the standing wheat crop, especially in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, all major producers of the staple cereal. Early estimate says that the crop damage would be of the order of 15-20 million tonne, meaning wheat output in 2021-22 crop...