-The Deccan Chronicle Seven years after unveiling the rural job guarantee scheme, the Centre on Tuesday announced a major extension of scope of works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) in a bid to revive demand for jobs, which witnessed over 20 per cent dip in the last financial year. Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday tabled the “MNREGA 2.0 — the second generation reforms”...

-The Hindu The Centre will include a number of additional activities in the work schedule of its flagship programme MGNREGS, Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh said here on Saturday. “On Tuesday [May 8], I will announce a major expansion of the activities taken up by MGNREGS on the floor of the House,” Mr. Ramesh told journalists. He said inclusion of new activities would boost the performance of the scheme. An expert...

-The Hindu Environment Ministry rejected forest clearance to Kalu dam in Thane district While irregularities were surfacing in irrigation projects around Mumbai in early April, the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) rejected forest clearance to the Kalu dam in Murbad taluka of Thane district, which would have submerged around 1,000 hectares of forest land. Work started last October without permission from the MOEF, and Indavi Tulpule...

A group of villagers, affected by the stalling of the Him Urja Vidyut Pariyojna at Nandprayag and Vishnugad Vidyut Pariyojna at Pipalkoti, staged a symbolicchakka jam on the Rishikesh-Badrinath highway at Pipalkoti on Sunday, threatening self-immolation if the government didn't order the resumption of construction work there. Unhappy with the government for first promising power and revenue generation opportunities to the affected villagers while taking away their lands, and later scrapping...

The economic crisis, the ecological crisis and the food crisis are a reflection of an outmoded and fossilised economic paradigm. It is a paradigm that grew out of mobilising resources for the war by creating the category of “growth”. It is rooted in the age of oil and fossil fuels. It is fossilised because it is obsolete, a product of the age of fossil fuels. If we have to address...