-The Hindu Ten years of implementation of the Right to Information Act has spawned a new breed of activism and citizenship The Right to Information (RTI) Act has completed 10 years of implementation. According to a conservative estimate based on the Information Commission’s annual reports, there are at least 50 lakh RTI applications filed in India every year. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative used the data to estimate that just under 1...

-The Indian Express Extended dry spell hits rabi plantings on top of failed kharif crop Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh, an agricultural success story of the past decade, is bracing itself for a rough time this year, with deficient rains resulting in the failure of the kharif crop and also putting a question market over sowing in the ongoing rabi season. The state, in recent times, had emerged as the country’s second largest contributor of...

-The Tribune To ensure stable prices of pulses and attractive returns for producers, policies of domestic prices and tariffs should blend. Import duties must be calibrated with demand. As the Indian economy grows at a rate of 7 per cent plus, assuming low growth as an aberration, the food basket will diversify. Within grains, the movement will be to pulses as shown by the  expert group on pulse production. The yield and...

-Hindustan Times This year is turning out to be a milestone year for the world’s future: In September, 192 countries signed the Sustainable Development Goals and on November 30, delegates from 195 countries will converge in Paris for 12 days to hammer out a new global climate accord. There are several cross-cutting issues between the two mega meets, climate change and agriculture being the two big ones. It is a no-brainer why...

-Livemint.com Supply constraints due to lower output, higher demand on increasing incomes behind spike in prices, says report New Delhi: Inflation has come down sharply this year alongside a softening in food prices, but the rise in the prices of pulses—the second most important part of the Indian diet after cereals—has been the sharpest in a decade, Crisil Research said in a report on Monday. Retail and wholesale inflation were at 42%...