-The Times of India Mumbai: Sumit Kulkarni puts on a surgical mask before entering the sprawling Annabhau Sathe Nagar slum in Mankhurd along with his team, equipped with wi-fi enabled tablets and high-resolution cameras, on a sultry afternoon recently. In a maze of narrow passages filled with a nauseating odour, gutter water and muck flow through the tightly-packed shanties. But Kulkarni and his young colleagues trudge along, knocking on every tin shed...

-StateTimes.com JAMMU: The Agriculture Department has introduced a revolutionary Paddy Drum Seeder for expanding area coverage under paddy cultivation. A simple machine weighing less than 10 kgs and costing around Rs 5000 has been introduced through Private Public Parternership (PPP) Mode the demonstration of which was conducted today at Seohra (Pounichak) in presence of Director Agriculture Jammu Dr S S Jamwal.   Elaborating the benefits of the machine Dr. Jamwal said that only three...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Stays on proceedings ordered by high courts and the Supreme Court delay trial by up to 6.5 years, according to a study by the law ministry. Significantly, the average life of a case is 10-15 years. In effect, a case remains in limbo for 50% of its life span because of stays granted by the higher judiciary. The study, which covered the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat...

-The Indian Express After Delhi, it is Maharashtra’s turn to attempt liberating fruits & vegetables from APMC shackles. Pune/ Vashi: Spread over 70 hectares land off the Old Mumbai-Pune highway, it’s a place where more than Rs 10,000 crore worth of fruits, vegetables and other farm produce gets traded annually. But right now, it’s also the scene of a prabodhan, a mass awakening campaign by traders and commission agents that could gather...

-International Rivers With an enduring drought ravaging many parts of the country, last month the Prime Minister waxed eloquent on the need to safeguard water during his monthly radio monologue. He raised some valid points on cropping patterns, frugal water use, collection and storage traditions etc., but he was conspicuously silent on the need to protect wetlands. Perhaps it’s no coincidence then that the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change recently...