Taking note of the depleting water table across the district, Gurgaon MP Rao Inderjeet Singh has asked local officers to identify water bodies in the district which can be revived to recharge ground water. The MP said: Under the Integrated Water Management programme, the water bodies can be saved from vanishing. Singh, also the chairman of Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT, reviewed the progress of work under central and state government sponsored...

A 13-member fact-finding team that visited Chintalnar, Morapally, Timmapuram and Tadmetla villages of Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh has found that the police claim that they had an encounter with Maoists in the jungles of Dantewada during March second week as “a hoax and far from reality.” “We have been inside these areas for two days, only to see that there was no ‘encounter' with Maoists as claimed by the police, which...

DEALS WITH MULTINATIONALS AND OTHER BIG AGRIBUSINESS COMPANIES A wide range of farmers’ organisations, Gandhian organisations, people’s movements and NGOs have united to oppose a series of disturbing agreements which the Rajasthan Government reached with various multinational and other agribusiness companies including Monsanto. These agreements, which greatly increase the control and influence of these companies over the agriculture sector in India’s biggest State (in terms of area), have proved so controversial...

Renowned wildlife biologist and tiger expert Ullas Karanth expressed serious reservations about the methodology adopted in the national tiger population estimation exercise. The results were released in Delhi on Monday, as per which the number of tigers across the country had increased from 1411 in 2006, to 1706. He called for an end to the government monopoly on tiger monitoring, and suggested that outside expertise and resources be harnessed so as...

Kerala has a long history of foodgrains deficit, especially in rice. For instance, deficit in rice has increased steadily in the State from 45 per cent to 85 per cent between 1957 and 2008. However, not enough attention has been paid to mitigate the food insecurity problem in the State in the context where there has been a large scale decline in the area and production of paddy. This paper...