-The Hindu While Monsanto and Indian seed companies spar, more worrying is the confused lawmaking underpinning regulation of patents Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) breed controversy like no other. Little wonder then that Monsanto’s much-maligned Bt cotton has spawned the mother of all intellectual property (IP) disputes in India, involving at least 15 different proceedings in various courts, government agencies and tribunals at last count. Most proceedings appear to have come at the behest...

-PTI New Delhi: Expressing their resistance against GM-mustard, thousands of people joined ‘Sarson Satyagraha’ in 18 States on Gandhi Jayanti today, asserting the hybrid variety is “unwanted, unneeded and unsafe“. The ‘Satyagraha’ took various forms ranging from Gram Sabha resolutions to remain GM-free to take part in a mustard festival, organised by the Delhi government to gather public feedback on GM mustard. Eminent citizens, scientists, film personalities, farmer leaders, artists, and activists took...

-Huffington Post Accountability Initiative finds rural India lacking in awareness of Swachh Bharat schemes. A survey of 7,500 rural households has found that 29% of Swachh Bharat toilets exist only on paper and of those that have been built, 36% are unusable. The survey was conducted by Accountability Initiative at the Centre for Policy Research in December 2015, across 10 districts in five States. The States included Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya...

-The Hindu Recent years have been a watershed in the public health programme in India. We have managed to eradicate diseases such as polio and tetanus, reduced maternal and child mortality rates significantly, halved the prevalence of tuberculosis and malaria and increased the life expectancy for both adults and children. These achievements reflect the unflinching efforts of the Indian government and all stakeholders in the past two decades to ensure health...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The countrywide monsoon rainfall this season was three per cent below average instead of the predicted six per cent above average, but it was distributed well enough to promise good crop yields, scientists said. An end-of-season analysis by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) shows that the quantum of the all-India rainfall was about 97 per cent of the long-period average. It also reveals that 27 of the country’s 35...