-Scroll.in Suranga is a horizontal tunnel-like well excavated in a hillside. Even as Kerala reels under severe drought, Gangadhar Rao never misses a day to irrigate thousands of areca nut trees, coconut trees and pepper plants on his 30 acres of farmland. Rao is a farmer from Bedadka Panchayath in Kerala’s northernmost district of Kasaragod and depends on Suranga for all his water needs — irrigation and domestic — round the year. Suranga is...

-Hindustan Times Ranchi: Jharkhand’s bureaucrats have denied thousands of farm workers their legally mandated livelihoods under the guise of plugging leakages in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), say activists. Earlier this month, HT reported that the ministry of rural development had cancelled 93 lakh MGNREGA job cards — of which 2.67 lakh cards were from Jharkhand — to weed out duplicates and cards corresponding to dead beneficiaries. At the...

-The Hindu Officials want security features changed every 3-4 years That the new Rs. 2,000 and Rs. 500 notes have the same security features as the old Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 ones has the security agencies worried. At a high-level meeting last week to discuss the presence of fake currency notes, officials at North Block were informed that the “covert security features” had not been changed since 2005. The Hindu had reported on...

-NDTV Chennai: The Tamil Nadu government today revived a traditional water resource management system involving public in the state's worst drought in more than a century. The government has taken the initiative to revive the 'Kudimaramathu' tradition that involves engaging farmers and local people to de-silt and look after tanks and ponds with a budget of Rs. 100 crore. K Sundaram, a small farmer at Manimangalam in Kancheepuram district, who has joined...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: India’s economic growth of 7% during October-December has sparked a debate on how output grew so fast at a time when the country was facing its biggest-ever cash crunch after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on November 8 the demonetisation exercise, which weeded out 86% of the currency notes in circulation. Economists and experts cite at least five reasons why the government data of a robust economic growth...