-The Financial Express The proposed MGNREGA changes can help plug the leakages and enhance agriculture productivity There is good news about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA) scheme. Recent press reports reveal that the rural development minister, Nitin Gadkari, has instructed lowering of the mandatory share for unskilled wages in total expenditure from the current 60% to 51%. He has also directed, quite rightly, that 50% of the expenditure be...

It is said that the Central Water Commission (CWC) has failed miserably in September 2014 to furnish information on river flow and raise alarm to people of Jammu and Kashmir living in the downstream areas in the midst of heavy rainfall. The CWC is responsible for making forecasts of floods in all flood-prone areas and provides advisory to the states for tackling floods. The NGO South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers...

-The Statesman Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed anguish over suicides by farmers, whose condition has not improved despite the high rate of economic growth. The reason for this distressing state of affairs is that economic policies are badly crafted. The primary effort of the Government has been to increase agricultural production. The price factor is not taken into consideration, the perception being that the farmer will be better off...

-The Times of India AURANGABAD: At a time when all of Marathwada is reeling under a drought-like situation, Akola Dev, a small village with a population of 3,000 in the Jafrabad taluka of Jalna district has set an example by introducing efficient water conservation methods in its periphery. All the villagers have joined hands to implement water conservation methods, thereby enabling them to sustain on last year's rainfall. Moreover, the farmers in...

-The Business Standard Agrarian crisis in the state appears as much a failure of planning as the result of a shortage of rain On a dry and cloudless day this month, Balbir Krishna Ingde sat by the Ujjani Dam in the Krishna basin, one of Maharashtra's largest irrigation projects, and confronted the problem of scarcity amid presumed abundance. "The water is filling up the reservoir. If only they could release it into the...