-ThePrint.in A hit to India’s rice output could lead to a major policy overhaul as it arrives on the back of a lower wheat harvest. New Delhi: After a severe heat wave in April-May singed India’s wheat crop, leading to a ban on exports, planting of rice, the main rain-fed crop in the ongoing kharif season, has been hit due to patchy rains in several states. Major rice-growing states such as Uttar Pradesh,...

-Down to Earth Number of ‘heavy rain’ days have gone up in recent years, finds IMD analysis Climate change might be behind the change in rainfall pattern in recent years, leading to regular floods. The rainfall pattern in the state has changed over the last decade, with a greater number of ‘heavy rain’ days.  Days receiving more than 65 millimetres of rainfall are called ‘heavy rainfall’ days. Western, eastern and southern districts of the...

-The Telegraph Lessons to take away from the two recent calamities in NorthEast It is never easy to rationalise tragedy. The two witnessed recently in the Northeast are no exceptions. One, the Assam floods in which the state’s two major rivers, the Brahmaputra and the Barak, and their tributaries wreaked havoc, killing nearly 200 people and, at one point, putting close to 4.5 million people in danger of starvation and disease. Two,...

-Down to Earth Telangana Chief Minister said cloudbursts may be a 'foreign conspiracy' during his visit to flood-hid Bhadrachalam India, especially its Himalayan states Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, are devastated by cloudbursts several times moslty during the monsoon season. Flash floods caused by a cloudburst in Uttarakhand in 2013, killing thousands of people, is one of the worst natural disasters the country recorded since the 2004 tsunami.  Climate change has been making these...

-The Telegraph The Telegraph reports on a riverine community’s determination to save its environs Once upon a time, when my forefathers were looking for land to settle down, they found this barren sandbar and decided to make it a habitable place,” says Nani Roy, 42, a resident of Manachar. Char is the Bengali word for sandbar. Manachar is the sandbar that extends from Durgapur Barrage to Panagarh in Burdwan district. About three...