-Business Standard/ IndiaSpend.org Complex changes in local and global weather patterns will have severe implications for India's 600 million farming community The unseasonal rain and erratic weather unsettling the Indian farmer—and the nation’s agriculture, economy and politics—are no aberrations. Extreme rainfall events in central India, the core of the monsoon system, are increasing and moderate rainfall is decreasing —as a part of complex changes in local and world weather—according to a clutch of...

-HuffingtonPost.in NEW DELHI: A chilling Humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Maharashtra, new government data shows. As many as 601 farmers, driven to desperation after crop damage due to unseasonal hailstorm and rains, have killed themselves in the last three months alone — which amounts to almost seven farmer suicides a day, the Times of India reported. Vidarbha, from where Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis hails, accounted for the highest number of cases —...

-Business-Standard Even funds for disaster relief being impeded when these come from international bodies Late last year, Caritas India, a venerable and respected voluntary organisation that has responded with alacrity to one Indian Humanitarian crisis after another, sent out an appeal through its international network for funds for contributions to relief and rehabilitation work in Jammu and Kashmir, where devastating floods and landslides in September had claimed 282 lives and damaged 2.53...

-Down to Earth Shortage of antiretroviral drugs and lack of diagnosis is not new in India, but government does not admit to the crisis The fight against HIV/AIDS in India is becoming tougher by the day as patients continue to face an acute shortage of antiretroviral drugs. This is an alarming situation for a country with the third-highest number of HIV+ people in the world-2.1 million. In 2012, about 140,000 people in...

-The United Nations A United Nations independent rights expert called today for policy changes that will allow developing countries the freedom to use their reserves to help secure the right to food without the threat of sanctions under current World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. "Trade rules must be shaped around the food security policies that developing countries need, rather than policies having to tiptoe around WTO rules," said Olivier De Schutter, Special...