Eminent scientist M S Swaminathan has said the new National Food Security Act should include a provision for distribution of millets through the public distribution system. This measure will be implemented keeping in mind the possible reductions in yield of rice and wheat due to climate change. Speaking at a climate change symposium during the 98th Indian Science Congress 2011 held at SRM University on Wednesday, Swaminathan elaborated on the...

The Environment and Forests Ministry was in news throughout 2010 -- be it for Vedanta Resources, Posco and Lavasa -- or for Jairam Ramesh's aggressive green activism. While the ministry rejected the green signal to Vedanta for its $1.7 billion project to mine bauxite in the Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa noting that the company violated the environment and forests rules, it put the $12 billion project by South Korean steelmaker Posco...

The Prime Minister’s Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges has decided to overhaul nutrition programmes in the country after a series of negative international reports about its abysmal nutrition record. The panel met for the first time recently although it had been constituted in 2008 after the country was placed below Sudan and Zimbabwe in the Global Hunger Index. The meeting, convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was attended by agriculture minister Sharad...

Yes, you heard it right, private tuitions will soon become a punishable offence. Karnataka government, taking cover of the Right To Education (RTE) Act, is set to ban private tuitions run by school teachers — and that too, from this year onward s. Sources in the Department of Public Instruction told DNA that under the state’s draft rules of the RTE Act, private tuitions by school teachers would be an offence that...

The retirement fund manager EPFO plans to replace PF account number with unique identification number, a move which will help in speedy transfer of a subscribers' funds in case of job change and allow them to track their accounts online. At present when a subscriber changes job, it takes months to transfer provident fund money from one account to another, as the records are required to be transferred from one office...