-The Pioneer The Government must establish research & development and innovation centres at the village level, which can be instrumental in evolving solutions for the actual problems being faced on day-to-day basis by the farming community The agriculture sector today faces multiple problems, thanks to insufficient rainfall, falling crop productivity and failures coupled with low profitability. Climate change, air pollution, frequent droughts and other adversities have brought the farmers to their knees,...

-The Business Standard States need to create alternative marketing structures for farm produce since middlemen also provide vital services that are otherwise unavailable to the farmer   One of the issues often raised in the context of high food inflation is the pressing need to change the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC), the marketing boards established by state governments. The earlier United Progressive Alliance government had asked the Congress-ruled states to remove fruit...

-The Hindu   An improvement in sanitation and cleanliness will eliminate much of the difference in malnutrition between India and the rest of the world, and across Indian States Historically the greatest advances in longevity and mortality reduction have come not from treatment of individual disease but from public health. This includes modern drainage and sewerage systems (sewage treatment plants), drinking water systems that produce and deliver disease-free water and solid waste disposal...

-The Hindustan Times Geneva/ New Delhi: India told the World Trade Organisation on Friday it will only back a worldwide reform of customs rules - the so-called trade facilitation agreement (TFA) - if its demands on rules for government-driven food procurement and welfare schemes are implemented in the same timeframe. "India is of the view that the TFA must be implemented only as part of a single undertaking including the permanent solution...

-The Indian Express India's ranking on human development is a reminder that the state is shrinking where it must not. India has improved, but only just, on the human development index, the United Nations' composite measure for overall well-being that takes into account life expectancy, income and education. According to the UN Human Development Report 2014 released this week, India ranks 135 on a list of 186 countries. It has become...