-Down to Earth Punjab produces about 19-20 million tonnes of paddy straw and about 85-90 per cent of this paddy straw is burnt in the field Burning of agricultural biomass residue, or Crop Residue Burning (CRB) has been identified as a major health hazard. In addition to causing exposure to extremely high levels of Particulate Matter concentration to people in the immediate vicinity, it is also a major regional source of...
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Good monsoon fills reservoirs, heralds bumper harvest -Sanjeeb Mukherjee
-Business Standard 85%of the country gets normal rains, but Karnataka declares drought The southwest monsoon season (June to September) across the country in 2016 was 97 per cent of the long period average (LPA). Although it fell short of predictions by the weather office, this was the first normal monsoon in the country since 2013. If the rainfall is between 96 and 104 per cent of the LPA, it is considered normal. LPA...
More »Delhi haze: When farm fires poison the capital's air -Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava
-Hindustan Times New Delhi: This winter season when Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal pleads for votes in Punjab, the Capital’s residents will be pleading the neighbouring states for clean air. Each year, farm fires in the surrounding states raise particulate matter in the city’s air by more than six times the normal limit. The air quality in Delhi has already started deteriorating . Last weekend recorded the worst air quality in the...
More »More Indians arrested under sedition despite low level of conviction
Although the number of cases of sedition has come down between 2014 and 2015, more arrests were made in 2015 vis-à-vis 2014, according to a new report from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The NCRB report entitled Crime in India 2015 Statistics reveals that the total number of sedition related cases that occurred in the country was 30 in 2015. The same document shows that the total number of persons...
More »Soil health card scheme lags behind due to lack of interest from states -Sayantan Bera
-Livemint.com According to a background note prepared by the agriculture ministry, less than a fifth of targeted farmers have received soil health cards New Delhi: The government’s flagship scheme to correct the imbalance in fertiliser use and reduce costs of cultivation by providing all farmers with a soil health card is moving at a slow pace as states drag their feet. According to a background note prepared by the agriculture ministry and...
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