-The Indian Express Hypothetically, if Ashok Kumar had been a conductor on any of the other 20 buses except the one the victim travelled in, he would not have even been an accused. On one of these bleak, foggy mornings that make for reflection, my mother wondered aloud how my life might have turned out if we hadn’t moved from Bombay to Delhi when I was a teenager. Not fundamentally differently, I...

-Revitalising Rainfed Agriculture Millets are considered as smart crops that are resilient to climate stress and have nutritional advantages. Odisha’s initiative in millets, from farm to plates, has been intervening through four verticals in production (with new agronomic practices), processing, marketing and consumption (includes awareness campaigns and also through inclusion in nutritional programmes). Odisha also started procurement of mandia/ragi (finger millet) since 2018-19. These have important lessons for other states in...

-TheWire.in The finance ministry had said, "Market fee is not a tax and the concerned APMC provides facilities in mandis in exchange for the amount." New Delhi: Amid the raging protests against the disputed agrarian laws passed by the Centre, a far more widespread and deeper controversy has emerged over the taxes levied across state agricultural markets. Members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have been criticising the Agricultural Produce Market Committee tax...

-The Indian Express Nearly half a century later, millet is making a comeback, thanks to the intervention of the local administration and NGOs. Today, Hanhaga is among 1990 farmers across 163 villages in Keonjhar who have taken up the cultivation of millet. Keonjhar: In the 1960s and ’70s, with the advent of the green revolution, the Indian taste for cereal tilted towards wheat and rice. This was the time when Rumbi Hanhaga (56),...

-Hindustan Times The dire projections of an acute food shortage came to the fore on the completion of four months of lockdown restrictions, which were imposed in end-March in a bid to prevent the spread of the raging coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak and the despite the largesse from the state government for 94 lakh beneficiaries between April and June. Bhubaneswar: A survey of pension beneficiaries from the four migration- prone districts of...