-Frontline Riding roughshod over farmers' concerns, the Gujarat government notifies a project to develop the Mandal-Becharaji Special Investment Region, an industrial hub spread over 50,884 hectares, affecting 44 villages. But the villagers see it as a real estate scam and are determined to resist it. GUJARAT may soon have several new townships. The Narendra Modi-led government has proposed to set up 13 special investment regions (SIRs), which are essentially industrial hubs...

-The Hindu Groundwater meets three quarters of the State's farming needs The Punjab State Farmers Commission recently published a draft new agriculture policy for the State that envisages substantial crop diversification from paddy and wheat staples that the State has been growing since the sixties. The draft policy, currently being debated in agriculture circles, is the first serious road map to steer Punjab's agriculture towards a new dynamic, necessitated by a sharp...

-The Hindustan Times Not very long ago, most Delhi residents drank water directly from the tap. The government utility supplied water twice a day. Some was stored in kitchen containers for drinking and cooking. The rest went to the overhead tanks to be used for bathing and washing. It was not that the municipal supply was very reliable. There were days in the summer when one had to go without water....

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 BANGALORE: Safe drinking water for all is a common promise in the manifestos of all political parties. Yet, villagers in North Karnataka are drinking water with high arsenic content, said a Comptroller and Auditor General report released on Thursday. Though the National Rural Drinking Water Mission looked into the issue, it made a conscious effort to keep itself away from the high-cost treatment technologies to deal with arsenic...