-Down to Earth The pesticides in question continue to be used in India, but are already banned, restricted or withdrawn in other countries Several experts underscored the ill effects of using chemicals excessively in agriculture and stressed on ecologically sound alternatives while backing a recent government draft order to prohibit a bunch of pesticides. Civil society members, citing risks, threats and damage from 27 pesticides, came out in support of a May 14,...

-The Indian Express Covid-related crisis offers NDA government opportunity to INCrease work days, entitlements under the employment guarantee scheme. In a recent article (‘Credit where it isn’t due’, IE, June 10), Union Minister for Rural Development Narendra Singh Tomar described the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) as a “failing scheme” before 2014. MGNREGA under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was by no means perfect, but when the National...

-Counterview.net The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted the risks of an unhealthy diet and the extreme fragility of food systems. The economic reconstruction that will follow the pandemic is the perfect opportunity to provide better nutrition and health to all. The pandemic should spur us to redefine how we feed ourselves, and agricultural research can play a vital role in making our food systems more sustainable and resilient. Family-owned farms still produce some...

-TheWire.in It took 100-120 years to double Europe's population but India is doing so in only 30-35 years – but there's a catch. The ‘population growth’ debate in India gained in momentum after Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed concern over a “population explosion” in his 2019 Independence Day speech. While Modi has appreciated India’s demographic dividend, he expressed anxiety on this occasion, and asked for measures to deal with the implied stress...

-World Health Organisation Newsroom India is among the countries most dramatically affected by snakebite and accounts for almost half the total number of annual deaths in the world. Authors of the article entitled ‘Trends in snakebite mortality in India from 2000 to 2019 in a nationally representative mortality study’ analysed 2,833 snakebite deaths from 611,483 verbal autopsies from an earlier study and conducted a systematic literature review from 2000-2019 covering 87,590...