-The Business Standard   Higher judiciary has not addressed the delays in India's courts Continuing what will be a year of quick personnel changes for the higher judiciary, a new chief justice of India, R M Lodha, has taken office. Justice Lodha will have only a five-month tenure. It will be difficult for him to introduce any far-reaching reform in this period. His initial speech after being sworn in must have been written...

-The Hindu Business Line   Technology is transforming Indian agriculture and increasing output. This is good news, given that India may need to produce 90 million tonnes of foodgrain annually by 2030 to feed its growing population, says Vishwanath Kulkarni Jitendra, a prosperous farmer from Machrauli in Haryana, had barely hired a combine to harvest wheat on his 10-acre plot when clouds started building up. The weather office had predicted rains over the...

-The Economic Times   NEW DELHI: The rural development ministry wants states to raise a cadre of so-called barefoot engineers to boost the effectiveness of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) by helping to speed up wage payments that are getting delayed by as much as three months because there aren't enough employees to monitor the work being done under the jobs programme. The ministry wants to rope in those...

-ANI   Aurangabad: Absence of proper rainfall has risked the farmlands of Aurangabad district in Maharashtra and lack of subsequent effective government intervention is leaving farmers with no option but suicide. According to climate report of researchers there are high chances of climatic conditions similar to El Nino effect to occur in 14 districts in Maharashtra. Farmers of Marathwada region in Aurangabad have been experiencing difficult times for the last three years. The...

-Down to Earth   People of West Bengal's Sunderbans region are setting up grain banks to safeguard against food crisis Subedan Bibi's mud hut is a few metres from the banks of the Bakchara river, a distributary of the Hugli in Sunderbans region of South 24 Parganas. When the river is in spate she and most others of Goyadham village move to the main market in the nearby block. "Floods and storms destroy...