-Down to Earth As June ends, the monsoon, it turns out, is deficient by 40 per cent. Despite the forecast of its revival in July, it is a concern for India's rainfed areas that account for significant foodgrain production and also host the largest number of farmers in the country. More than 100 districts are officially "chronic drought-affected" areas. Why have we not been able to drought-proof them? On June 28 Prime...

-The Tribune The community has to pay the cost of environmental degradation if sustainable agricultural practices are not followed. Food can also be produced by in-built provisions for ecological services. For this, sustainability issues have to be addressed with policy support. An ecosystem is a dynamic, complex, functional unit of diverse living organisms, physical environment and humans are its integral part. The wellbeing of mankind depends upon food, water, fibre, medicine, flood...

-Economic and Political Weekly     Sustained and focused efforts have to be made by the Tamil Nadu state government to provide relief and rehabilitation to the drought affected people of the state. S Rajendran (myrajendran@gmail.com) is with the Department of Economics, Periyar University, Salem, Tamil Nadu. Due to the failure of the north-east monsoon in December 2013, Tamil Nadu is witnessing drought like conditions this year, leading to poor agricultural productivity, rural distress,...

-The Hindu     Filmmakers Kavita Bahl and Nandan Saxena on their award-winning documentary "Candles in the Wind" which chronicles the struggles of the widows of the Green Revolution in Punjab As calls for a ‘second green revolution' begin to be heard, it is important to examine the legacy of the first. In Punjab, the laboratory of the revolution, the experiment seems to have gone wrong - water tables have declined, agriculture has become...

-The Telegraph   New Delhi: Four activists claimed today that an Intelligence Bureau report that has named them for campaigning against genetically-modified (GM) crops appears to have been influenced by foreign organisations promoting GM crops. The activists, who have been campaigning either for tighter regulatory mechanisms for the assessment of GM crops or for a ban on the introduction of GM crops in India, said the IB report appears to support the introduction...