-The Times of India HIWARE BAZAR (Ahmednagar): Amid desperate denizens scrounging for water in the drought-affected parts of Maharashtra stands a village which has not felt the need to call a single water tanker for the last 21 years! While other villages in the arid Ahmednagar district are digging borewells even up to 400 feet, the underground water table in Hiware Bazar is so good that the precious commodity is available barely...

-The Hindu Hyderabad: The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development has said that there were no instances of suicide by farmers in areas where the bank supported watershed programmes. Addressing a press conference highlighting the performance of Andhra Pradesh regional office of the bank on Monday, its chief general manager Hairsh Java said the bank released a grant of Rs.175 crore for 166 watershed projects in AP last year and 154...

-PTI New Delhi: The Rural Development Ministry will carry out a pilot study on environmental benefits and green outcomes of rural flagship scheme MGNREGA in seven states with the help of United Nations Development Programme. The project will be conducted in 14 gram panchayats, two each from seven agro-ecological zones of the country -- Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Guajrat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN),...

-The Hindu If we run out of groundwater, millions of people will be left without any means to sustain themselves The protest by farmers in Chikballapur recently, over the scarcity of drinking water, received extensive news coverage as it halted Bengaluru in its tracks after key highways were blocked. Interestingly, very little of that coverage was devoted to the groundwater crisis that underpins the problem in such regions. Groundwater plays an important role...

-Livemint.com The government relies on for-profit big business to deliver public goods despite their inability to deliver Can we listen to the budget as an annual public statement by the government of its economic and social philosophy and intent? The centre abandoned five-year plans that earlier laid down a road map of where government policies are headed. The budget, then, is an important reality check of whether the government is literally...