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☆ India's top court tells states to stop crop burning as New Delhi's air turns hazardous
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-07 | by ( Shivam Patel | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Air quality dips every year ahead of winter, when calm and cold winds trap pollutants from sources including vehicles, industries, construction dust, and agricultural waste burning. Delhi has stopped local construction, closed primary schools till Nov. 10 and will impose restrictions on use of vehicles next week to fight pollution, but it wants its neighbouring states to control crop residue burning. At 2 p.m. on Tuesday, the real time air quality index stood at 306, a level categorised as 'hazardous' by Swiss group IQAir. "We direct the state government of Punjab and adjacent states to Delhi - Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh - to ensure that crop (residue) burning is stopped forthwith," Supreme Court judge Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said. Farmers in Punjab and Haryana usually burn crop stubble left behind after rice is harvested in late October or early November to quickly clear their fields before planting wheat crops.

Persons: Anushree, Boulton, Sanjay Kishan Kaul, SAFAR, Justice Kaul, Kaul, Simon Cameron, Moore Organizations: REUTERS, NEW, Farmers, Thomson Locations: Karnal district, Haryana, India, NEW DELHI, New Delhi, Delhi, Swiss, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh

☆ Indian farmers carry on burning stubble despite cost to health
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-06 | by ( Manoj Kumar | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

But for him, the only alternative to burning crop residues is to join the queue to hire machines to clear his field, which would cost him about $100 for his four-acre farm. More than 85% of Indian farmers are categorised as small, meaning that, like Sharma, they own about four acres or fewer. Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana has typically accounted for 30% to 40% of Delhi's October-November pollution, according to government air-quality monitoring agency SAFAR. POLITICAL WILL LACKINGAjay Singh Rana, a Haryana farm official, said the number of farms burning stubble in Karnal had dropped to 96 so far this year from 270 last year. ($1 = 83.1750 Indian rupees)Reporting by Manoj Kumar, additional reporting by Anushree Fadnavis; editing by Barbara LewisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Persons: Anushree, Aashish Sharma, Sharma, SAFAR, Dharamvir Singh, Ajay Singh Rana, Sharma's, Mukhi Ram Sharma, Bajinder Pal Punia, Manoj Kumar, Barbara Lewis Organizations: REUTERS, Central Pollution Control, Reuters, Thomson Locations: Karnal district, Haryana, India, New Delhi, Sharma's, Karnal, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Samalkha

☆ Global rice shortage is set to be the largest in 20 years – here's why
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Lee Ying Shan | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

The global rice market is set to log its largest shortfall in two decades in 2023, according to Fitch Solutions. "At the global level, the most evident impact of the global rice deficit has been, and still is, decade-high rice prices," Fitch Solutions' commodities analyst Charles Hart said. That would mar the largest global rice deficit since 2003/2004, when the global rice markets generated a deficit of 18.6 million tonnes, said Hart. "The global rice production deficit situation will increase the cost of importing rice for major rice importers such as Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and African countries in 2023," said Tjakra. "It is our view that global rice production will stage a solid rebound in 2023/24, expecting total output to rise by 2.5% year on year," Fitch's report forecast, hinging on India being a "principal engine" of global rice output over the next five years.

☆ India's young investors prefer crypto to gold and 'boring' stocks
▼ + stars: | 2022-03-03 | by ( Diksha Madhok | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

New Delhi CNN Business —Indian businesswoman Swati Daga first bought bitcoin in 2017, when the cryptocurrency was trading well under $3,000. “I find stock markets boring,” she told CNN Business, adding that she enjoys the “thrill” and “recklessness” that comes with investing in volatile currencies. The growth is driven by younger investors — mostly under the age of 35 — and many of them are coming from smaller cities and towns, founders of two of India’s biggest crypto exchanges told CNN Business. WazirX also has over 10 million users, and called 2021 a “phenomenal year” for crypto trading in India. On-again, off-again relationshipThe excitement over crypto is rising in India despite the country’s on-again, off-again relationship with digital currencies.

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