-DNA Govt gears up to ring-fence farmers, prices from Poor rains India's farm sector shrank for the first time in five years in the year ended March 31, Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said on Wednesday, a day after the government forecast a likely drought this year that could hit output again. The Met office cut this year's monsoon forecast on an El Nino weather pattern that has raised fears of...

-News Wing Daltonganj: The world may have become a global village; India too may have reached the Mars,but the lifestyle of Kharwars, the tribal people living in difficult terrains of Palamau forest who like to boast of being the kin of famous duo Nilambar-Pitambar has crawled just by an inch—they have taken to farming.This too, for the last two years. While by nature the Kharwars are fighter tribes and not adapt to...

-Outlook New Delhi: A significant ozone build up has been witnessed this summer in several areas of the national capital, including the one where Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal resides, increasing the public health risk, a green body warned today. A latest analysis done by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on the eve of World Environment Day on June 5 found that the area where Kejriwal resides was "highly vulnerable" to...

-The Hindu The Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of chronically undernourished people in developing countries by 2015 is within reach. But progress must accelerate by the end of this year Almost 800 million people, or one in nine in the world, continue to suffer from hunger. The number of hungry people has declined globally by more than 167 million over the last decade, and by more than 200 million since...

-The Indian Express It can be strengthened —by the collection of taxes at the local level, for instance. Democratic decentralisation, conceived two decades ago, seems to be a lost cause at first sight. Beyond lip service by politicians, neither panchayats nor municipalities have captured the public imagination as viable, responsive, accountable institutions of government. Just after the Karnataka panchayat elections, which ended on June 2, the continued disempowerment of local governments is...