-Hindustan Times Both, the farmers who undertook the march and those who went on strike, represent the wide spectrum of the state’s ongoing agrarian and rural distress. Last year, on June 1, thousands of farmers in Maharashtra went on an unprecedented strike, refusing to sell their produce to markets and cutting off supply of daily necessities – milk, vegetables and fruits – to Cities. The two-day strike forced the Devendra Fadnavis-led...

-The Hindu Dockless bicycle-sharing attracts residents who live in apartment blocks spread across several acres Bengaluru: Until recently, Rohan Kapoor, a Class XI student staying in Adarsh Palm Retreat on Outer Ring Road (ORR) in Bengaluru, had to be picked up and dropped at the exit gate within his own apartment complex. That was because the gate is 2.5 km away from home. Now, he uses his phone to unlock one of the...

-The Hindu Business Line An analysis of how agri concerns will play out in four poll-bound States this year has some key takeaways for politicians ‘Rural distress’ became the major economic narrative to interpret the recent Assembly elections results for Gujarat, specifically the fact that rural support for the incumbent government was considerably less than the support from Cities. The woes of the rural sector could be a bigger issue this year. Of...

-TheWire.in Environmentalist and water management expert Ravi Chopra says river inter-linking will sow the seeds for future conflicts between states. There is nothing new about the proposed river-interlinking project being pushed by the government, and this ‘unnecessary excess’ of a project will create more problems than it promises to solve, says environmentalist and water management expert, Dr Ravi Chopra, the director of People’s Science Institute, Dehradun and a managing trustee of the...

-The Hindu Phenomenon observed in Cities Chennai: Very heavy rainfall lasting less than 24 hours (sub-daily) in urban locations in India has become more intense during the last few decades. The frequency of sub-daily rainfall extreme has also witnessed a two-fold increase between 1979 and 2015, say researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology-Gandhinagar. Currently, rainfall data is reported on 24-hour basis and long-term sub-daily observations are limited. In Cities, heavy downpour for less...