An expert panel has blamed the increase in commercial plantations for destroying forests, erosion of soil and water bodies in the Western Ghats. According to a Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel report, which was submitted to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) by its Chairman, Prof Madhav Gadgil, water guzzling crops and monoculture plantations such as tea, coffee, and cardamom are responsible for depleting forest wealth. “These crops have aggravated the...

It is mostly caused by deliberate neglect and designed failure of the way we manage water and land It’s drought time again. Nothing new in this announcement. Each year, first we have crippling droughts between December and June, and then devastating floods in the next few months. It’s a cycle of despair, which is more or less predictable. But this is not an inevitable cycle of nature we must live...

-The Economic Times   It doesn't need economists, environmentalists or water conservation experts to tell us that the promise of free water is a disastrous idea. It will encourage farmers to cultivate water-guzzling crops. And in the process, it will lower water table levels, making water an even more precious commodity.  But this is election season when parties consider the exchequer as candy-vending machines. It is also the season when bad politics prevails...

Punjab's attempts at diversification from water-guzzling paddy hasn’t made much headway. With looming desertification and reverse flow from water-logged blocks having brackish groundwater to areas where the groundwater table is fast depleting, the need to diversify has been underlined since long. Even in a lean monsoon year (2009), there was a record harvest of the crop. Its acreage did not fall even last year when a major part of the paddy...

THE fast-depleting groundwater levels and subsidised electricity supply to farmers in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh spell doom for agricultural productivity in the region regarded as the “Food Bowl of India”, and has prompted the government to turn its gaze towards the eastern region for fulfilling its food security ambitions. A background note drafted by the department of agriculture and cooperation (DoAC) for the two-daylong workshop on the theme...