-The Times of India Of the nearly 25,000 person days of work done under the job guarantee scheme (MNREGA) in Kannapuram gram panchayat in district Kannur, 97% was by women. This seems some kind of a record but Kerala has many such villages -91% work done in 201516 under the jobs scheme was by women. More than good implementation it's a result of the dismal employment situation in a state repeatedly ranked...

-Livemint.com With food and water in short supply, farmers in Bundelkhand are leaving cattle to fend for themselves Mahoba (Uttar Pradesh)/New Delhi: Some time in March, Dhan Prasad Anuragi led his pregnant cow Kajal a couple of miles outside his village and abandoned her. The 55-year-old farmer, who lives in Balchaur village of Mahoba district in Uttar Pradesh, says he had no choice. He couldn’t afford to feed the cow and his only hope...

-The Indian Express The suffering of millions does not create public outrage, much less government accountability. The people of India’s villages carry collective memories of centuries of calamitous losses of sometimes millions of lives in famines. Famines have been pushed into history, unarguably one of free India’s greatest accomplishments. But the same can’t be said about droughts, which continue to extract an enormous toll on human suffering. At least a third of the...

-Business Standard India suffers an almost 36% shortfall in green fodder and over 11% shortage in dry fodder in normal times After water, the central government is now planning to enlist the help of Indian Railways to transport fodder from surplus states to deficient ones to save millions of livestock which have been facing a crisis due to severe drought and drinking water crisis in many parts of the country. Officials said that...

-Business Standard Green revolution pioneer now marked by rising rural despair, with high costs and low incomes pushing a mass of small cultivators into a debt trap Chandigarh: Fifty eight and counting…the number of farmers' suicides in Punjab in the past three months due to agrarian distress is alarming. Maharashtra, Punjab and Telangana top this grim list, the Union government informed Parliament last week. Rainfed states are in a crisis due to two...