-Hindustan Times Ranchi: Reshma Devi, 50, wakes up at 4 every morning and walks a kilometer to fetch water from a government pipeline. The only water source in her locality, a tube well, has dried up. And she has not enough money to buy water being sold at Rs 20 for 50 litres. Devi, a resident of Ranchi’s Yamuna Nagar, is not alone. More than 15,000 residents of 12 localities spread over...

-The Hindu As the government pushes for ‘Make in India’, it could begin by unmaking the damage the post-1991 reforms inflicted on domestic industry. This year marks 25 years since the so-called “economic reforms” were launched in July 1991. By now, broad contours of the policies and practices that characterised such reforms are well known, viz. radical deregulation, marketisation and privatisation of the industrial, technological and financial sectors, and an across-the-board...

-The Hindu The grandiose spectacle that the Art of Living Foundation has organised on a thousand-acre site on the floodplain of a river in Delhi to demonstrate ‘humanitarianism’ and the oneness of cultures will go down as a spectacular example of thoughtless environmental destruction. The Central and Delhi governments have, in a display of extraordinary non-application of mind, allowed a private entity to take over part of the Yamuna floodplain, an...

-The Hindu New Delhi: Plea seeks stoppage of construction on the Yamuna floodplains for the World Culture Festival. “Has any of the agencies assessed the environmental impact of the Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living Foundation’s three-day ‘World Culture Festival’ to be held in the city starting this Friday?” asked the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday. It was hearing a plea seeking stoppage of ongoing construction on the floodplains for...

-Business Standard Most of the allocation would be spent on completion of existing irrigation schemes and their results would only be felt after a gap Finance Minister Arun Jaitley sought to rely heavily on expanding the country's irrigation network to counter the ill-effects of two consecutive failed monsoons. Most of the allocation would be spent on completion of existing irrigation schemes and their results would only be felt after a gap. Around 89...