-The Indian Express The NDA government’s approach towards MGNREGA — the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act — has differed from that of the previous UPA regime in one significant way: There is greater emphasis now in the building of “individual household” assets, as opposed to “community” assets, under the scheme that provides 100 days of guaranteed wage employment annually to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do...

-The New Indian Express Something remarkable happened when the farmers came marching to Mumbai recently. Instead of greeting them with hostility, Mumbaikars welcomed them with affection, food and water. This change in attitude was triggered by the farmers’ extraordinary discipline and their efforts to ensure minimal disruption to the Mumbaikars’ routines. Even hard-boiled journalists acknowledged, for a brief moment, urbanites had realised  our farmers and adivasis were indeed facing difficult times. The...

-Financial Express If the government implements the assured minimum support price at one and a half times the production cost, as promised, it would jack up consumer prices of jowar and distort the market dynamics of the “poor man’s cereal”. Besides, the measure would also dampen exports, analysts warn. At 150% of the cost (A2+FL), the MSP for jowar for the next season could be at least 37% higher than the...

-Groundxero.in India’s forests are officially on sale. Forests, which are ecological and cultural constructs intrinsically linked with human communities that have been living in and using those for ages, have turned into mere repositories of ‘products’ such as timber and ‘ecosystem services’ that could be quantified, valued, priced and exchanged—or so the Draft National Forest Policy prepared by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change(MoEF & CC) would have us...

-The Indian Express The preliminary findings in three of these districts — Pune, NandurBar and Raigad — show that percentage of wasting and of under-nutrition is higher than as recorded by the NFHS-4 and the Integrated Child Development System (ICDS). Mumbai: A survey by the public health department in four districts of Maharashtra has found significant under-reporting of malnutrition cases. The preliminary findings in three of these districts — Pune, NandurBar and...