-The Indian Express A joint venture between the Railways and the Karnataka government, the original project involved construction of 329 bridges and 29 tunnels, and required felling of more than 2.5 lakh trees on 965 hectares of forest land.  The Rs 2,315-crore Hubli-Ankola railway line, cutting across the Western Ghats in Karnataka, has been shown the red signal by a Supreme Court panel on forest and wildlife, which said that the...

-The Hindu Business Line Both the Centre and States need to be prepared for the possibility in peninsular India The bad news is that the met department’s pessimistic monsoon forecast — of it being 7 per cent less than the long-period average (LPA) — is turning out to be right. The monsoon started off with much promise in June, finishing the month with a 16 per cent surplus and kharif sowing doing...

-Deccan Herald Chennai: The Southwest Monsoon, which is nearing the final stage, might be good in North and North-East India. However, it is not so kind as should when it comes to the Southern region.  Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala have received deficit rainfall. The latest statistics released by the Regional Meteorological Centre here on Thursday said though few districts received normal rain, Tamil Nadu registered three per cent deficit rainfall...

-Business Standard CRISIL Ratings identifies four states and five crops at highest risk to deficient monsoon Within the next 40 days, the southwest monsoon will formally start retracting from the Indian mainland, ending its four-month journey over the country, pounding some parts with excess showers, but could leave almost 30 per cent of the country with deficient or less-than-normal rains, unless there is an abnormal pickup in the coming weeks. That looks highly...

-The Indian Express We can add millions of hectares to irrigated land without building a single new dam. We just need to adopt a different method of managing the water already stored in them. One of the drivers of India’s irrigation sector has been the construction of large dams on our rivers, which Jawaharlal Nehru famously described as “the temples of modern India”. While these dams have helped increase India’s irrigated...