-News18.com In an interview with News18’s Rupashree Nanda, Dreze, who was a member of Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council and an architect of the National Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), says that there have been no major initiatives in the social field in the last four years, with the partial exception of Swachh Bharat. Government data reveal that the Indian economy is growing at a robust rate but noted economist Jean Dreze believes...

-IndiaToday.in Mumbai: While the Indian Meteorological Department's (IMD) prediction for a good monsoon is a relief for farmers and drought affected villages, there are many tribal villages near Mumbai that face water shortage. These villages are completely dependent on government water tankers as wells have become parched. Every day the women of Dhamni village in Mokhada district gather at 6 am in anticipation of the government water tanker that comes here daily. However,...

-The Indian Express Large numbers of the tribals who have gathered in the Mumbai are not seeking a loan waiver, but the implementation of the vision envisaged in Forest Rights Act, a legislation enacted by Parliament in 2006. The nearly 40,000 sunburnt and dusty men and women waiting patiently in an open ground in Mumbai on Sunday night tell the story of the continuing gloom in Maharashtra’s farmlands more succinctly than the...

-TheWire.in Environmentalist and water management expert Ravi Chopra says river inter-linking will sow the seeds for future conflicts between states. There is nothing new about the proposed river-interlinking project being pushed by the government, and this ‘unnecessary excess’ of a project will create more problems than it promises to solve, says environmentalist and water management expert, Dr Ravi Chopra, the director of People’s Science Institute, Dehradun and a managing trustee of the...

-The New Indian Express TIRUCHY: Cliched it may sound, but it indeed was a Black Friday for farm workers as the Supreme Court order reducing Tamil Nadu’s share of Cauvery will have a cascading effect and effectively shrink cultivation area. Already rendered jobless by the drought, reduction in the cultivation area will only add to their woes. Marginal farmers and farm workers in tail-end delta regions, are worried that the SC verdict...