-Livemint.com Investments in irrigation, combined with better-quality seeds, can dramatically improve returns to farming Global attention has been devoted to water scarcity and its effect on Indian farmers. However, new analysis from Indian researchers suggests that far more good could come if irrigation were combined with seed improvement. Tata Trusts and Copenhagen Consensus have commissioned new research by noted experts from India and around the world, looking at measures that would help Indian...

-The Hindu ‘Information Commissioners are not being appointed’ Hyderabad: Releasing her RTI Story Power to The People in the city, activist Aruna Roy, who led the movement for getting the legislation in place, said citizens were moving towards a more challenging and non-transparent environment. “This government has consolidated opaqueness. It has systematically weakened the RTI Act by granting exemptions to CBI and other agencies on security grounds. Electoral bonds are a case in...

-The Indian Express Several commissions were either not functioning or functioning at reduced capacity as posts of Commissioners, including those of Chief Information Commissioners, were vacant during the period under review. A recent study to assess the performance of Information Commissions (ICs) by non-government organisations Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) and Centre for Equity Studies (CES) has found several shortcomings in their functioning, which impact the effectiveness of the Right to Information...

-Down to Earth Genetically modified food items are flooding Indian markets with seemingly no trouble at all Just last year the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) had told the Supreme Court that “GM (genetically modified) foods are not allowed in the country” and yet no action has been taken against the GM foods flooding Indian markets. The Coalition for a GM-free India has complained to the FSSAI with pictorial...

-TheWire.in Environmentalist and water management expert Ravi Chopra says river inter-linking will sow the seeds for future conflicts between states. There is nothing new about the proposed river-interlinking project being pushed by the government, and this ‘unnecessary excess’ of a project will create more problems than it promises to solve, says environmentalist and water management expert, Dr Ravi Chopra, the director of People’s Science Institute, Dehradun and a managing trustee of the...