-India Water Portal Gender-transformative approaches are needed for climate adaptation, to lessen the stresses that force people to migrate. A crowd of people jostling by the ticket counter at Jhansi railway station in Uttar Pradesh; men and women, some with families in tow, boarding trains to Delhi, Lucknow, Mumbai and other big cities. These are common sights during the summer months at Jhansi, a major town and railway junction. People from rural...

Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...

-Hindustan Times According to the Central Ground Water Board’s 2019 report, state tops the country in over-exploitation of groundwater at 79% Patiala: The proposed reduction in the area to be covered under traditional water-guzzling paddy in Punjab this year due to labour shortage is likely to give some respite to already depleting groundwater table in the state. As per the target set by the state agriculture department, the department is expecting to reduce...

-India Water Portal How can India change the game on groundwater management to deal with its overexploited aquifers?. After independence, India was largely food insecure but post Green Revolution around the 1970s, foodgrain production increased manifold consequently reducing food insecurity and poverty in the country, in spite of rapid population growth. Its ability to achieve targeted results was largely dependent on the explosion of groundwater abstraction mechanisms like tubewells. Groundwater development continued...

-Economic and Political Weekly In Tamil Nadu, the extreme variation in rainfall had reduced the availability of water to agriculture and caused the groundwater table to fall by 37%. The production of rice, an important crop, had became particularly precarious. A well-designed upscaling strategy boosted and sustained the production of rice; it also helped the build-up of organic matter and improved soil fertility. This experience shows that the System of Rice...