-LIve Mint A day ahead of a crucial ministerial meeting to review India’s severe rainfall deficiency, the agriculture ministry has unveiled a district-level plan of action that primarily consists of advisories on the kind of seeds to be sown, altered sowing plans and the conservative use of water. According to the department’s website, advisories have been issued to Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, West...

-IANS  Terming India as world's capital for open defecation, Drinking Water and Sanitation Minister Jairam Ramesh Thursday said that 100,000 "bio-toilets" will be installed in about 300 backward gram panchayats in the next two years at a cost of Rs.150 crore. "We are the world's capital for open defecation.  It is a matter of shame, anguish, sorrow, anger," Ramesh said, noting over 60 percent of all open defecation takes place in India. Speaking at...

-DNA It would be sad if the ghastly violence at Maruti Suzuki’s (MSIL) Manesar plant on July 18, 2012, in which a HR manager died, were to be understood simply as a ‘murderous workers’ vs ‘rational management’ kind of an incident. There is a history and a context to this violence, and how that is understood, and acknowledged, by India Inc. will indicate how serious we are about preventing such incidents...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: More farmers are using weather insurance to mitigate risks from climate change. Top two weather insurers -- Agricultural Insurance Corporation (AIC) and ICICI Lombard -- say business is growing at 25% annually and now covers more than 200 districts across 21 states. "The growth has been so spectacular over the past five years that as many as 12 million farmers, growing crops on over 15 million hectares...

-The Indian Express In Raipur hospitals, a joke doing the rounds these days is: “Soon, someone will file an RTI to know the number of uteruses left in Chhattisgarh.” What has prompted it is, however, no joke. If a series of media reports in the state is to be believed, the uteruses of thousands of women have been removed in unnecessary operations. These reports talk of doctors cheating BPL families by encouraging...