-The Week A revolutionary farming system is working wonders in Nalanda district Nalanda: If not for an agricultural technique known as SRI (system of rice intensification), Sumant Kumar of Darveshpura in Bihar's Nalanda district would have remained a faceless farmer. In 2012, with the help of the state agriculture department, he tried out SRI on an acre that usually bore only modest yields. It worked, and Sumant got a bumper harvest. An...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A year after the Supreme Court pulled up 19 states, including Bengal, that did not have a commission to protect children's rights and directed them to set up one, most of these panels exist only on paper. All states/Union territories are required to have a child rights commission under Section 17 of the Commission for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005. Twenty-three states now have the panels -...

-Live Mint India needs to move away from wild swings in making environment policies The Western Ghats, spread over six states in western and southern India, cover an area of approximately 165,000 sq. km. They are home to a unique ecosystem in the country that is under threat from human activities. Nearly 59% of this area has been exploited: habitation, plantation or agriculture. Only 41% of the area is a natural...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Two government agencies - the census office and the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) - have come up with two completely different estimates of India's slum population, leaving both policy makers and the aam aadmi puzzled. The difference is so big that it can't be papered over by any technical jugglery. It has again raised suspicions of India's statistical system floundering, especially when it comes...

-The Business Standard The state was the sixth-worst during the year, according to the Annual Survey of Industries data A set of government data released recently seems to puncture the Narendra Modi-led Gujarat government's claim that the state's industrial performance has been robust. According to the data fron the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), the industrial growth rate for the state's organised sector slumped below one per cent in 2011-12. And, in fact,...