-The Indian Express Agriculture needs a champion in the Union cabinet. July, this year, marks the silver jubilee of economic reforms. It is time to take stock of our major successes and failures. There is a saying that bad times are often good for policies and good times are bad for policies. It is well-known that the foreign exchange crisis, with reserves falling to as low as $1.5 billion, triggered fundamental changes...

-The Hindu Business Line   Icrisat-Microsoft develop solution that analyses massive data to predict the right time Hyderabad: Forget about weather SMSes or marketing tips to farmers over the phone. Now, an app-based solution can tell farmers when to sow their seeds. Sifting massive volumes of data, this app will help farmers in Andhra Pradesh to pick the perfect sowing week. The advice could vary from farmer to farmer and from village to...

-The Hindu It is critical that the HPS is finalised after considering possible distortions in medical insurance schemes and looking at models that have worked. The Health Protection Scheme (HPS) that was announced in the Union Budget 2016 is more generous than the earlier scheme, the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY). Poor households now get an annual health cover of Rs.1 lakh; the limit under RSBY was Rs.30,000. In principle, the HPS...

-The Hindu The way forward may be to not rely only on dams, interlinked rivers, and borewell drilling — but to supplant these with effective water conservation, storage and groundwater recharge For the past one week, The Hindu has explored the multi-faceted crisis of water scarcity that has gripped India this summer, through a daily series titled ‘Last Drop’. The series sought to give our readers a comprehensive understanding of six critical...

-Livemint.com With food and water in short supply, farmers in Bundelkhand are leaving cattle to fend for themselves Mahoba (Uttar Pradesh)/New Delhi: Some time in March, Dhan Prasad Anuragi led his pregnant cow Kajal a couple of miles outside his village and abandoned her. The 55-year-old farmer, who lives in Balchaur village of Mahoba district in Uttar Pradesh, says he had no choice. He couldn’t afford to feed the cow and his only hope...