Biodiversity drives sustainable and climate-resilient farming and the biotechnology industry. Everything should be done to spread bio-literacy for an era of bio-happiness in rural and urban India through the conversion of bio-resources into jobs and income.  Biodiversity provides building blocks for sustainable food, health and livelihood security systems. It is the feedstock for the biotechnology industry and a climate-resilient farming system. Given its importance, a Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)...

India is setting up a $150-million corpus using funds from the World Bank, European Union and the UK government’s Department for International Development to hatch innovative strategies to universalise secondary education. Called the National Innovation Fund, the corpus will provide financial support to out-of-the-box projects for which budgetary funds cannot be used because of the risk of failure, top government officials have told The Telegraph. “Think of the fund like a...

A State-level agricultural services extension campaign was launched at tribal-dominated Asawata village in Pratapgarh district of Rajasthan on Saturday with a call made to the farmers to get the benefit of seed and fertiliser supply as well as the soil tests. State Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Minister Harjiram Burdak, inaugurating the campaign at the Government Secondary School in the village, said 4,800 quintals of seeds would be distributed free of cost...

Farmland struck by infestations of bugs following widespread adoption of Bt cotton made by biotech giant Monsanto.  Scientists are calling for the long-term risks of GM crops to be reassessed after field studies revealed an explosion in pest numbers around farms growing modified strains of cotton. The unexpected surge of infestations “highlights a critical need” for better ways of predicting the impact of GM crops and spotting potentially damaging knock-on effects...

India’s story in the global gender gap review is a little good news followed by a lot of bad news. The good news first: The 73rd (Panchayat) amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1993, has brought over one million women at the grassroots into the political system. Another shining indicator relates to the female head of government. Sixteen of the last 50 years were occupied by a female in the...