-The Business Standard The service would be launched across the country to provide information, advisories and services for India's 120 mn farmers Following the footsteps of services like Reuters Market Light (RML) of Thompson Reuters and Dr. Dekalb Farm Care of Monsanto India, the Union department of agriculture is starting its own SMS-based farm information and advisory service to be called the Kisaan SMS. According to an official statement, the SMS-based service would...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The World Health Organisation wants India's public to give up Bollywood songs as caller tunes on their mobile phones and replace them with short health messages from superstars of India's entertainment industry. The global health agency today launched what is being dubbed as the world's first attempt to promote health campaigns via caller tunes, drawing on the voices of 10 personalities from Bollywood and other entertainment sectors. Amitabh Bachchan's...

-The Hindu 750 million homes online; 16% less women on the Web than men While India inches towards 13 per cent Internet penetration with roughly 160 million users, nearly 40 per cent of the global population or 2.7 billion people are already online in 2013, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). In the developing world, 31 per cent of the population is online compared to 77 per cent in the developed world....

-The Hindu Indentured labour may be a forgotten part of our colonial economic history but Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh are still sending ‘Girmitya' to toil in distant lands The descendants of indentured labourers, who migrated from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to erstwhile colonies, recently met at The Hague in the Netherlands to commemorate 140 years of migration - perpetuated through a system popularly known as ‘Girmit.' They gathered from all...

-The Hindu MSSRF launches second phase of ‘Knowledge Connectivity Programme,' FM station Chennai: The M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) has launched the second phase of its successful IT-driven rural empowerment initiative to help more farmers and fishermen in Nagapattinam and Karaikal districts. Ever since it was rolled out in 2011-12, the ‘Knowledge Connectivity Programme' supported by MARG Karaikal Port has benefited about 20,000 farmers, fishermen and women entrepreneurs of self-help groups in 34...