-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: Sowing in the current kharif season has commenced in right earnest with an area of 54 lakh hectares (lh) brought under cultivation till Friday, according to data released by the Agriculture Ministry. A total of 55 lh was covered during the same period last year. This is despite the fact that the total live storage capacity in 76 reservoirs used for irrigation stood at 22.66 billion...

-The Hindu New policy hopes to expand their reach and spread Birgaon: When the lights went on in Birgaon for the first time on a chilly winter evening late last December, it allowed the government to announce in April this year that every village in India now had electricity. Every home in Birgaon actually has power, thanks to a solar microgrid set up in the village centre and wired into every home. By...

-The Hindu The 15th Finance Commission has to take a call on the degree of equalisation that’s feasible In the context of the Terms of Reference (ToR) of the 15th Finance Commission (FFC), certain key aspects relate to (a) the mandate for using the 2011 population; (b) ‘whether revenue deficit grants’ be given at all; (c) the impact of the goods and services tax (GST) on the finances of the Centre and...

-Hindustan Times Revving motors, ceaseless honking, blaring music are taking a toll on those who live or work around busy roads. New Delhi: Dust mixed with toxic fumes from vehicular exhausts exacerbate lung and heart diseases and trigger death from heart attack, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung infections like pneumonia, and cancers of the lung and respiratory tract. What is less known is that traffic noise adds to this incessant vehicular assault...

-The Hindu An estimated 10 million people in nine districts of West Bengal drink arsenic-laden groundwater. Priyanka Pulla finds that despite alarms having been sounded over decades, the State government has moved at a glacial pace to tackle the crisis, while people struggle to cope with the symptoms On a Thursday morning at the government primary school in Madhusudankati, a village in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district, a gaggle of five-year-olds...