-The Times of India BEED/JALNA: In the pitch darkness at 3am, the village of Katchincholi empties out onto the bone-dry river bed of the Godavari. Armed with as many pots as they can carry, the women start digging the gravel with their hands. Once a muddy pool of water appears, they scoop it into their pots. Then they strain the sludge and stones. This is the water the village drinks. A single...
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Rural reach -Amita Sharma
-Financial Chronicle From the inner recesses of Chattisgarh to the upper crevices of Sikkim, a look at how MGNREGA initiatives are changing lives The large blackboard outside the police station reads like a rate list. There are different monetary awards for Naxalites' surrender with different weaponry, the highest, Rs 4.5 lakh, for surrender with a light machine gun, Rs 3 lakh with an AK 47, and only Rs 30,000 with a 12...
More »A tale of two numbers -Clement Imbert
-The Indian Express For my first field visit to study the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) a few years ago, Nikhil Dey took me from Jaipur to Rajsamand, where I met a team from the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) and the block officers they worked with. The block officers explained how the details of each day of work provided under the MGNREGS was entered online at nrega.nic.in....
More »Women on the Edge of Land and Life -Manipadma Jena
-IPS News SUNDARBANS: November is the cruelest month for landless families in the Indian Sundarbans, the largest single block of tidal mangrove forest in the world lying primarily in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. There is little agricultural wage-work to be found, and the village moneylender's loan remains unpaid, its interest mounting. The paddy harvest is a month away, pushing rice prices to an annual high. For those like Namita Bera,...
More »Now, a grass that could prevent landslides
-The Times of India Almora (Uttarakhand): Bilayat grass, also called trap grass, could be the thing to prevent landslides. The roots of this variety of grass grows into soil and rock, and binds matter so fast that land will not slide. A non-governmental organisation in Nainital, working in collaboration with the Bareilly-based Indian Veterinary Research Institute, has suggested that this grass could be grown in the hills of Uttarakhand to prevent...
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