Though the situation is far better than last year, inadequate and erratic rainfall in the month of June has meant that water level in most of the reservoirs in the country is slightly below the average level expected around this time of the year.

Running late by almost ten days, the monsoon is likely to revive in the next 24 to 48 hours, bringing an increase in rainfall activity over most of peninsular India and on the western coast.

The drab and dull climate meetings in Bonn finally saw some sparks of excitement on Thursday when the grouping of small island states sparred with oil producing nations led by Saudi Arabia over the need to have a scientific evaluation done on options for restricting the global rise in temperatures to within 1.5 degree from pre-industrial levels.

With little progress being made in the climate talks underway in Bonn for the past one and half weeks, India and China Wednesday stressed on the need to go back to basics and re-start the process from the first principles enshrined in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

While there has been a general frustration at the lack of progress in the climate talks, it is evident that the ongoing meetings in Bonn are struggling to address more pressing issue at hand

For the past one week, negotiators from all over the world have been meeting in Bonn to take forward the unfinished work of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference last December and prepare the ground for the completion of global comprehensive agreement in the next conference in Cancun, Mexico, slated at the end of this year.

Ahead of the next round of climate talks in Germany in June, India is trying to bring the emphasis back on per capita emissions, something that was rather muted in the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change conference last year.

Its still very early days for a monsoon forecast for this season but at least the available signs as of now are all pointing in the right direction. The good news is that a major deficiency in rainfall, as had happened last year, is an extremely remote possibility.

Misleading the public on safety of genetically modified crops or organisms without scientific evidence would not be made a punishable offence, the government has decided following concerns raised by some scientists and civil society groups.

Officials in the atomic energy establishment have expressed the apprehension that the delay in the nuclear liability bill is almost certain to derail the schedule of setting up new nuclear power plants in the country.