-The Hindu Business Line Bihar village gives up fertilisers/ pesticides for eco-agriculture On World Environment Day last year — which happened to be one of the hottest summer mornings — as we stood on the main road roughly a kilometre from Kedia village, in the Jamui district of Bihar, we heard loud voices in the distance. Soon we found 50-60 children marching and shouting in unison, ‘JEEvit maati... JEEvit khet!’ (alive is the...

-The Indian Express A Pulses Revolution is possible even in the most backward districts, as a PPP project in Bundelkhand has shown. Damoh (Madhya Pradesh): Zahim Khan has two major worries, as he surveys the urad (black gram) crop on 14 out of the 20-acres land being jointly cultivated by him with 13 other farmers. The immediate concern is rains. Damoh district in Madhya Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region, of which his village Somkheda is...

-The Times of India Thanks to online courses and the initiatives of a few individuals, youngsters from underprivileged backgrounds are learning to crack the code. In 2014, Akash Nautiyal was robbed - he lost everything money, laptop, books, clothes, and since he didn't have cash to get to the call centre he worked at, he lost his job. His landlord evicted him, and Nautiyal, then 17, took up a job as a...

-Bloomberg.com   Millionaire farmers are benefiting from measures intended to help poor farmers.   Stuffed animal heads adorn the walls of Kunwar Vikram JEEt Singh’s mansion on the outskirts of Delhi, and he also owns a three-bedroom apartment in a gated condominium in the city. His children go to one of India’s most exclusive private schools. Yet Singh doesn’t pay income tax because he’s a farmer. Singh is one of thousands of rich landowners who...

-The Hindu It has become irrelevant after the crippling budget cuts After facing a massive budget cut last year, the future of the Panchayati Raj Ministry continues to look bleak. After the BJP government shuttered two of its key programmes — the Backward Regions Grants Fund (BRGF) and the Rajiv Gandhi Panchayat Sashaktikaran Abhiyan (RGPSA) — several officials at the Ministry feel it would soon be closed down and turned into a...