-Newsclick.in “Our population today is around 136 crore. Where will you get food grains for them through zero budget farming? This is sheer madness.” There is an inherent seductive charm to the term zero budget natural farming, for it makes the arduous occupation of agriculture appear beguilingly simple, an economic proposition without any risk or even requirement of capital. Coined by the Vidarbha-based farmer, Subhash Palekar, who was bestowed with the Padma...

-The Hindu T.N., Gujarat lead list; toll could be higher as many States do not report incidents The number of deaths of sanitation workers while cleaning septic tanks and sewers has risen, despite a ban on manual scavenging, with 620 cases reported since 1993, of which 88 occurred in the past three years, according to the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry. To a question by MPs Asaduddin Owaisi and Syed Imtiaz Jaleel...

-The Hindu India needs to double yearly rate of fall in stunting cases to achieve its 2022 target A new report, ‘Food and Nutrition Security Analysis, India, 2019’, authored by the Government of India and the United Nations World Food Programme, paints a picture of hunger and malnutrition amongst children in large pockets of India. This punctures the image of a nation marching towards prosperity. It raises moral and ethical questions about...

-Scroll.in/ The Third Pole Flash-flood warnings routed through NGOs are giving border villages precious lead-time to escape the wrath of suddenly rising rivers. In the last few weeks of June, a series of WhatsApp messages were sent from Bhutan to India to warn cross-border friends downstream of the Aai, Saralbhanga and Manas rivers about cloud-bursts, swollen rivers and possible flash floods affecting people in the Indian state of Assam. Although originating from officials,...

-The Hindu The disease had claimed more than 154 lives in Bihar Gorakhpur: The tension on Sunita’s face is palpable as she looks at her eight-year-old daughter who is asleep on a bed at the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Baba Raghav Das Medical College in Gorakhpur. While the official diagnosis is yet to be ascertained, doctors say the child has shown symptoms of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome, a group of diseases that...