Groundwater, which irrigates half of Indian agriculture and provides 85% of rural drinking consumption, is an increasingly scarce resource. There is a growing understanding that it must be approached as a common property resource for collective benefit. It is best understood and managed by those who live near them and use them rather than agencies who visit sporadically - that is the central premise of efforts around participatory groundwater management....

-The Times of India Most of the poorer, less industrialized states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Bihar appear to have done well in increasing their work force in the past decade according to recently released Census 2011 data. Surprisingly, richer or more urbanized states like Punjab, Haryana and Kerala have lagged far behind in job creation. But if you take away natural population growth, the picture changes dramatically. It becomes clear that the...

-The Hindu     In spite of the rosy picture painted by the World Bank, the prospect of eliminating extreme poverty remains distant In a protracted period of gloom and persistent recession with feeble signs of recovery in a large part of the developed world, the World Bank, Brookings Institution and others can be forgiven for their euphoria over the accomplishment of a key Millennium Development Goal (MDG) - of halving extreme poverty in...

-Outlook Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir has contained its population growth by around six per cent in the decade from 2001 to 2011, according to figures released by state Directorate of Census Operations here today. From 29.43 per cent in 2001, the population growth has declined to 23.64 per cent in 2011 in the state. However, the overall child sex ratio in Jammu and Kashmir has decreased from 941 in 2001 to 862 in...

-AFP ROME: The UN's food agency on Tuesday said obesity and poor nutrition weigh heavily on the global economy and told governments that investing in food health would bring big economic as well as social returns. Lost productivity and spiralling health care bills linked to malnutrition "could account for as much as five per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP)," equivalent to $3.5 trillion (2.6 trillion euros) a year, the Food...