-Livemint.com The production of ‘mahua’ is finally entering the formal economy as new initiatives seek to upscale this indigenous drink, selling it across the country and even the globe It is a cloudy morning in Nangur village in Bastar district, Chattisgarh. It is a settlement of a little over 400 families, considered fairly large in these parts. We make a bumpy journey down a narrow, unpaved road intermittently shaded by sargi (sal)...

-Business Standard Haryana confident of handling the fires; to add over 1,230 new custom hiring centres soon New Delhi: Farmers in large parts of Punjab and Haryana haven’t completely abandoned stubble burning, though there has been considerable decline in number of burning sites this year, as compared to 2017. A big reason farmers in Punjab are being forced to burn the paddy stubble to clear their fields is an acute shortage of ‘Happy...

-The Telegraph Bid to help poor who lost cattle in floods A Kerala district has devised a programme under which people are being requested to donate cows to the poor who lost their cattle in the recent floods and landslides. The hill district of Wayanad, which recorded the death of 223 cows during the calamity, has come up with the Donate a Cow programme, under which the administration will rebuild the livelihoods of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre has asked the states to consider serving milk, milk products and honey with their school midday meals, explaining this can be a way of using up the country's surplus stocks of these foodstuff. Nutritionists and health activists have welcomed the move but questioned the objective of exhausting surplus milk powder and honey. Some have cited the absence of additional funding as a deterrent to implementation, for...

-The Indian Express Only 21 per cent of India’s milk production gets processed through the organised sector and the rest passes through unorganised small players. And that’s where the crisis is most intense. Farmers, who had high expectations from the Narendra Modi government, are a disillusioned lot today. Market prices of several crops have remained well below their minimum support prices (MSPs). Moreover, milk prices have fallen by 20 per cent...