-Down to Earth Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget has all the ingredients to deepen India’s farm crisis These are desperate times for India. Rural unemployment was at a 45-year-high while consumption expenditure of rural families fell 9 per cent between 2011-12 and 2017-18, according to a report by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), which the government never released but got leaked to the media in November 2019. Between 2011-12 and 2015-16, the income of farmers...

-Down to Earth This is because agriculture in India is largely dependent on chemicals including pesticides and their usage has a huge impact on the health of humans, animals, bio-diversity and the environment Pesticides are regulated in India through the Insecticides Act, 1968 and Insecticides Rules, 1971. The experience in administering this Act over the last five decades has exposed certain gaps which spurred the need to propose a new law. The Pesticide...

-Down to Earth The record-breaking vegetable price rise indicates an era of high food inflation in coming years Rising prices of food items, particularly that of vegetables, have spiked retail inflation to a 68-month high of 7.59 per cent in January 2020, according to the National Statistical Office. While the inflation figure captured headlines, a crucial analysis of the reasons behind this sustained increase in food prices slipped public attention. Extreme weather events...

-Down to Earth India, like the rest of the world, is intensely debating population explosion. But while countries are struggling to keep their numbers at replacement level, India is on the right path towards stabilising population sooner than expected. So what's the discussion all about? Be it a political meeting, a hot TV debate or just a healthy tea-time chat, the topic would most often veer around population. That was about...

-Down to Earth As the geography of arsenic contamination spreads, there is an urgent need for governments to reorient mitigation measures. That’s because the focus till now has only been on drinking water, but new research says arsenic has contaminated our food chain Arseic contamination in groundwater is one of the most crippling issues in the drinking water scenario of India. According to the latest report of the Central Ground Water Board...