On October 1, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev tweeted, “Received the Civic Chamber’s appeal over the Pavlov Experimental Station. Gave the instruction for the issue to be scrutinised.” The president was responding to a Twitter campaign to save the world’s oldest seed bank. The fate of Pavlov Experimental Station appeared to …
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has certified the controversial rice variety PAU-201 as fit for human consumption. The fate of 400,000 tonnes of rice, costing Rs 4,000 crore, was hanging in balance for more than a year; Food Corporation of India (FCI), the Central procurement agency, and the …
INDIAN government’s policy to regulate cotton exports to make it available for the domestic textile industry may affect farmers. In a decision that has cotton growers worried, the Centre on September 28 deferred cotton exports from October 1 to November 1. The registration of exports has begun and no duty …
THE Kerala Cricket Association’s plan to build a stadium designed to international specifications at Edakochi has run afoul of environmental laws. The state forest department has filed a first information report in a magistrate’s court saying the cricket association (KCA) has destroyed mangrove trees in preparation for the construction work. …
TWO months after a cloudburst and floods destroyed their crops and land, hundreds of farmers in Leh are struggling to make a living. Farmlands in the district of Ladakh are covered with thick layers of dried mud and boulders. Stanzin Dorjey, 48, of Taru village, one of the worst affected …
It is a natural sweetener and calorie free. But soft drinks makers don’t use it in beverages. The reason is the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is focussed on artificial sweeteners and does not recognise other sugar substitutes. The authority’s predilection for artificial sweeteners has left a …
Regulating access to genetic resources and equitable sharing of commercial benefits of biodiversity are among the most contentious issues under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The tenth Conference of Parties, scheduled October 18-29 in Japan, is expected to evolve an international regime on access and benefit sharing, also called …
Our control over our food and our health requires inventive institutional reordering and new ideas about the way food regulations work. Last fortnight I discussed the problem of antibiotics in honey. This contamination is harmful and shows complete disregard of the regulatory sy stem to mind our safety over business. …
He is a former MLA, a khandani landlord and owns more than 121 hectare (ha) apart from many local businesses. Known as the ‘sarkar’ of Sonkachch tehsil of the dry Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh (MP), Rajendhra Singh Baghel met natural farming guru Subhash Palekar about 10 years ago. Today, …
THE forest departments of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat are forcibly evicting tribals from forestland. Around 50 huts of the Korku community in Madhya Pradesh were demolished on August 29. On July 30, forest guards assaulted tribals of the Kunbi community for cultivating in forestland in Dang district in Gujarat. The …
Tango with nature India has been using lakes, ponds and baolis (step wells) since ancient times ('What monsoon means', July 16-31, 2010). Delhi was once replete with water bodies. In the past 50 years, government agencies started disbanding natural ponds, lakes and baolis, declaring their water untested, and therefore, unfit …
Setting aside environmental concerns and ignoring the threat to one of the most fertile belts in India, Uttar Pradesh government is set to start work on the eight-lane expressway along the Upper Ganga Canal. The 147.8 km expressway will connect Greater Noida in Gautam Budh Nagar district and the Uttar …
The endemic of chronic renal failure (CRF) emerged in 2002 in the farming provinces of Sri Lanka. An estimate of dietary cadmium intake was between 15 and 28 microg/kg body weight per week. The mean urinary cadmium in patients diagnosed with stage 5 kidney failure was 7.6 microg/g creatinine and …
China has tremendous climatic and ecological diversity, so the impacts of climate change on natural and managed systems might likewise be expected to be diverse. Yet so far systematic studies have been rare. Here, the impacts of historical and future climate change on water resources and agriculture in China are …
AIMING to catch up with global competition and India's fibre requirement of the future, the Union Ministry of Textiles put up a draft national fibre policy on its website in June. It has invited comments and suggestions. Though India is the second largest producer of man-made fibre in the world, …
IT WAS yet another meeting in a series that began six years ago. On July 28, close to 40 members of Parliament and state leaders met in Room 124 of Krishi Bhavan, the Delhi headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture, in what seemed a last-ditch attempt to thrash out the …
Vijay Jawandhia is a farmer in Vidarbha, the region which brought home to us the crisis that is compelling farmers to kill themselves. He is also a leader of farmers. Recently, he spoke of new challenges: "In my village we are hiring vehicles and bringing people from cities to work …
Potato type I and II serine protease inhibitors are produced by solanaceous plants as a defense mechanism against insects and microbes. Nicotiana alata proteinase inhibitor (NaPI) is a multidomain potato type II inhibitor (pin II) that is produced at high levels in the female reproductive tissues of the ornamental tobacco, …
The draft action plan on climate change by Union Territory of Puducherry. It highlights various approaches and activities formulated for adopting six missions under NAPCC to mitigate the climate impacts. See also: State and National Climate Change Action Plans of India West Bengal state action plan on climate change Orissa …
Sushil Kumar Lodhi, 32, walks about Dashehari village with newspaper clippings, which carried news of his grandfather’s death. His grandfather suffered a heart attack on his way back from Lucknow. He went there to convince officials not to build a solid waste management facility in their village because it would …
