-IPS News TIKAMGARH: Eighty-year-old Chenabai Kushwaha sits on a charpoy under a neem tree in the village of Chitawar, located in the Tikamgarh district in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, staring intently at a dictaphone. “Please sing a song for us,” urges the woman holding the voice recorder. Kushwaha obliges with a melancholy tune about an eight-year-old girl begging her father not to give her away in marriage. The melody melts...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The rapid warming in the Indian Ocean is weakening the monsoon, particularly over central India where agriculture is still mostly rain-fed, a study by meteorologists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology shows. The weakening trend in Summer rainfall during 1901-2012 was also observed over the centraleast and northern regions of India, along the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basins and the Himalayan foothills. This will include states of Uttar Pradesh,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Summer monsoon weakened across large swathes of India in the past century, scientists said today, linking the reductions in rainfall to hitherto-unobserved trends that they say portend a dangerous drying of the Indian subcontinent. Scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, said they had identified a significant weakening trend in Summer rainfall between 1901 and 1912 over central and northern India, the Ganga-Brahmaputra basins and...

-Business Standard Odisha govt readying contingency Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has asked all district collectors to submit contingency plan proposals for agriculture sector after an India Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast said there will be less than normal monsoon rains this year. "All district collectors have been asked to submit contingency proposals for their areas to the agriculture department keeping in view their geography and resources after consulting the respective zonal DDAs (deputy...

-The Hindu CHINNAMANUR (Tamil Nadu): Paddy growers in Cumbum valley have successfully harvested rice fallow pulses, third crop in a year, thanks to Summer rain in the last month. They had raised green gram in lands where they harvested paddy, the second crop in the valley. Summer rain had kept the paddy field wet after harvest, which was sufficient to raise the third crop. “To capitalise on the Summer rain, we had recommended...