-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...

-Business Standard No consensus as yet on social security code  Even though the Indian Labour Conference (ILC) could not build a consensus on forming a labour code on social security schemes, it recommended a slew of measures to broaden their coverage. The two-day conference, a tri-partite platform of trade unions, industry and the government, concluded here on Tuesday with a series of recommendations. It recommended that Employees' State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) coverage be expanded...

-The Indian Express The view of MGNREGA as a makeshift work programme is far off the mark. Few social programmes in India are more resented by the corporate sector than the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). This is easy to understand, considering that one of the primary aims of the MGNREGA is to empower workers and reduce their dependence on private employers. Naturally, employers see this as a threat...

-The Financial Express Smart irrigation management steps, including harnessing social sector schemes for irrigation works, did the trick The spate of recent farmer suicides has once again drawn the country’s attention to the deepening agrarian crisis. Media is abuzz with opinions and expert advice on how to provide succour to the farming community. Oft-repeated among these is the demand to increase public investment in irrigation. However, we need to remember that, since 1990, public...

-The Times of India RAIPUR: Adopting grafting method and other technology, a Bastar-based farmer has overcome the tribal region's airborne disease bacterial wilt, which hampered the cultivation of brinjal vegetable in this region of Chhattisgarh. Progressive farmer Ramesh Chawda now gets an yield of 1,25,000kg of brinjal from each acre of his 2.5 acres land. To make brinjal cultivation a success in this terrain, he adopted the horticulture technique of grafting the...