-PTI New Delhi: India’s foodgrain production is estimated to grow to an all-time high of 284.83 million tonnes in the 2017-18 crop year ending June, driven by record output in wheat, rice, coarse cereals and pulses after a normal monsoon, according to the Agriculture Ministry. Wheat output has been pegged at record 99.70 million tonnes, rice at Rs 112.91 million tonnes and pulses at 25.23 million tonnes for the 2017-18 crop year,...

-The Hindu Business Line The rejection of the the Gadgil panel report, by all the six States along the Western Ghats, has proved to be a costly error The floods of catastrophic dimensions that ravaged Kerala recently have brought into sharp focus the all-round ecological destruction caused by human interference in the State’s hilly terrains. The fact that there were 12 major landslides and hundreds of minor ones within a fortnight in the...

-TheWeek.in Noted ecologist Madhav Gadgil blames the “law-flouting” state government for the devastation in Kerala. The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), headed by Gadgil in 2011, had suggested measures to preserve the ecologically frail Ghats. But, the Kerala government, like the other five states, chose to reject the report. Having suffered such devastation, Gadgil feels that the state should survey the “ecologically sensitive zones” that have been compromised due to...

-The Indian Express Despite framing rules, proposing fines and starting ‘model colonies’, waste segregation in the capital has failed to take off. With mountains of garbage continuing to grow, The Indian Express reports on the challenges before authorities. The year 2015 was an eye-opener of sorts for Arpit Bhargava. Down with dengue, the lawyer started thinking about the link between waste and diseases. But thoughts gave way to action when he heard...

-PTI ‘The decline of groundwater inflow is also impacting the health of the river’ Kolkata: Ganga, the 2,600-km-long trans-boundary river of Asia, has Witnessed “unprecedented low levels of water in several lower reaches” in the last few summer seasons, a study undertaken by a professor of IIT-Kharagpur has said. The study, published recently in Scientific Reports magazine by Nature Publishing Group, used a combination of satellite images of groundwater levels of Ganga, numerical...