The Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) has welcomed the government decision to raise the minimum support price (MSP) for pulses for the kharif season. The increase, which ranges from Rs 380 per quintal to Rs 700 per quintal, is part of the government’s strategy to boost production of pulses in the country. The hike in MSP for pulses this year is significant, both in terms of absolute increase and percentage...

The steady progress of the monsoons ought to refocus policy attention on India's deeply stressed water economy . There are fast rising demands on water resources generally, together with poorly governed supply systems, with the result that overall balances are precarious. What is worse, there's increasingly reckless mining of groundwater, and aquifer depletion is concentrated in many of the most populated and economically significant areas. Now, we have a highly...

Pollution contents were 300 to 1,000 per cent more than the norms The Gujarat Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, a voluntary organisation working for environmental protection, has come out with startling facts on how the badly treated industrial effluents are being dumped in the major rivers in the State and in the sea. The rivers include the Narmada, Mahisagar, Sabamarti and Damanganga and the sea outlet is in the Gulf of Cambay. Samiti convener...

The Centre's decision to raise the minimum support price (MSP) sharply for pulses, moderately for coarse cereals and oil seeds, and not at all for rice and cotton (the nominal hike for rice merely rolls in the bonus offered last year) is right, in the conventional sense. The signal against increasing acreage for rice this kharif is sound, given the huge stocks with the government. The signalling is right, too,...

The Supreme Court on May 7 ruled that natural resources were national assets that belonged to the people and were ideally exploited by public sector undertakings. This obviously implies that local communities, including tribals, living on mineralised land, enjoy entitlements but not prescriptive ownership rights to such national assets. This is an important reiterative clarification defining mineral rights in Fifth Schedule areas that are currently in contention. Whether PSUs should...