-The Times of India There is a saying in Harendragarh, a tribal village 50 km from Rajasthan’s Banswara town, that if a man eats the last rotla (chapatti) he will fall ill. So by default the last rotla, thinner than the rest and made from leftover dough along with the stale remains of the dal or vegetable made that day, would land on the plate of the woman of the house....

-Hind Kisan In the hill state, only 16 percent of the cooks working under the school meal programme are Dalits. This is an appalling figure in a state where they make one-fourth of the population. Caste is a stronger divider in this picturesque Himachali village of Saraha than the river which cuts across dividing it into two halves. The west bank hosts mostly Dalit houses and the upper castes have occupied...

-The Times of India RANCHI: Jharkhand government's Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme, introduced last year for ration distribution, has serious flaws, an audit by Right To Food (RTF) Campaign has revealed. After the pilot DBT scheme was introduced in October 2017 at Nagri block in Ranchi district, residents could no longer purchase rice at Re 1 per kg from ration shops and instead had to wait for transfers to their bank accounts....

-The Times of India JAIPUR: Rajasthan is heading for deep water crises not due to fluctuating monsoon, but due to shunning of traditional practices using and conserving water. Every village household till a century or some decades ago had its own water conservation system by effectively using used domestic water for cleaning clothes, irrigation. Lastly, accumulating the wastewater in a small hole in the end, say experts at a two conference...

-PTI The Centre will consult state governments early next month to set up a mechanism for protecting farmers' income when market prices fall below the minimum support price (MSP), Agriculture Secretary S K Pattanayak said today. A model law is also being prepared to ensure tenant cultivators get institutional credit and interest subsidy, he added. "We will call a meeting of state governments early next month to discuss a mechanism so that farmers...