Political

 Plasmid-encoding Carbapenemase-resistant Metallo-B-Lactamase (PCM or NDM-1) is an enzyme that makes bacteria resistant, not only to a broad range of antibiotics such as carbapenems and other β-lactam, but also to multiple other antibiotic classes, leaving very few treatment options available, when a person gets infected with such bacteria.

Article courtesy: CGNet Swara

NREGA: No payment for a year, complaints do not work
Rasatulla Khan, state president of Samajwadi party in Chattisgarh, is talking about a village in Baloda bazar block where laborers have not got their NREGA wages for more than a year now.

NREGA: Gram Panchayat does not take any application for work
Ramdas Dhurve from Narsinghpur district in Madhya Pradesh, says that in their area Sarpach and Sachiv in Gram Panchayat do not accept any application for work under NREGA.

Considering the health, environment, and even the convenience, organic terrace gardens complement well with today’s urban living. Apart from safe and fresh vegetables, the advantages in terms of physical exercise, clean air, happiness of mingling with nature and the resultant satisfaction is enormous. It is the need and the responsibility of every urban dweller to know, practice and promote urban farming especially terrace gardens for our own benefit and for the benefit of the society to which s/he owes.

Following the invitation of Member of Parliament (Ludhiana) Mr. Manish Tewari, the Hon’ble Minister for Environment and Forests Mr. Jairam Ramesh along with officials of the Ministry of Environment and Forests including the Chairman of the Central Pollution Control Board, visited the site of the Buddha Nala in Ludhiana, Punjab in September of 2010.

The fundamental right to water in rural areas is well-established in India, but the actual content of this right has not been elaborated upon in judicial decisions. There is no general drinking water legislation that would provide this missing content.

After 3 decades of relentless fighting for rehabilitation, 113 tribal families displaced by Sardar Sarovar Dam on the River Narmada in India’s Madhya Pradesh have finally had their demand fulfilled. The families have received land on which they can now build their homes again. Rakesh says that the development has raised the hopes of thousands of others like him who are still awaiting resettlement.

“Agricultural Statistics at a Glance 2010”  is compiled by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation. It provides a wide range of data on outlays, expenditure and capital formation, crop production and productivity across States, markets and prices, terms of trade, price support and procurement, domestic and international trade, credit, insurance etc.,

Timely availability of reliable information on agricultural output and other related aspects is of great significance for planning and policy making particularly, in the management of concerns in areas such as food security, price stability, international trade etc. The information is extremely useful in identifying problem areas and the nature of required intervention in terms of spatial, temporal and qualitative inferences. The handbook presents a comprehensive picture of the progress made by the agriculture sector at the All India level as well as across the States. 

This paper discusses the need to shift from chemical intensive agriculture to organic farming. The authors in their vision for a chemical-free agriculture also stress that organic agriculture is a way to achieve food security.

The authors begin with the current crisis in Indian agriculture. Stating that though the Green Revolution made India self-sufficient in food production in the shortest time it also resulted in a host of problems. The indiscriminate use of fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides and herbicides has created problems of decline in the soil fertility, pollution of water resources, and chemical contamination of food grains, amongst the many similar issues now linked to the Green Revolution.

These two reports discuss the dependency of agriculture on phosphorous and the ways to mitigate the problem.

The first report looks at agricultural dependence of chemical nutrients on a global scale and even discusses the potential international political fallout of a reduction in phosphorous. The second report is focused on ways to tackle the dependency on this mineral, in the Indian context. However, both speak of the need for finding alternatives to the current methods of obtaining phosphorous, which is largely through mining.

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)organised the Water India conference, around the theme “Transforming the municipal and industrial water landscape - Issues, challenges and opportunities".