-The Tribune The outlook for all things smart is opening up, including Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA). Varanasi, set to develop as a Smart City, will be a lighthouse for sectors seeking sustainable ways to handle demographic pressures, finite environmental resources and climate change. The Finance Minister's budget speech has promised a hundred smart cities. With urban India well covered, it is the turn now of smart agriculture, equipped both to enhance food...
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Karnataka's Smart, New Solar Pump Policy for Irrigation -Tushaar Shah, Shilp Verma, and Neha Durga
-Economic and Political Weekly The runaway growth in states of subsidised solar pumps, which provide quality energy at near-zero marginal cost, can pose a bigger threat of groundwater over-exploitation than free power has done so far. The best way to meet this threat is by paying farmers to "grow" solar power as a remunerative cash crop. Doing so can reduce pressure on aquifers, cut the subsidy burden on electricity companies, reduce...
More »Power to the people -Sunila S Kale
-The Indian Express This July, I spoke with a farmer in Angul district, Odisha. During the kharif season, most of his 45-acre farm is devoted to paddy, but during the rabi season, he grows a variety of pulses, oilseeds and vegetables. He is currently president of the village watershed committee, working to implement an impressive programme to halt soil erosion and water runoff. He pointed out newly constructed contour and farm...
More »River linking will not solve our water problems
-The Hindustan Times A few weeks after the NDA came into power, the environment minister announced that the interlinking of rivers project - which had been more or less stalled under UPA 2 - will get an impetus under the new government. The Centre has now started groundwork in the Ken-Betwa project, involving Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, while a detailed project report to link the Damanganga and Pinjal rivers to provide...
More »In Haryana’s poorest part, subsidies go to the dead & fake -Sandali Tiwari
-The Indian Express Mawat (Haryana): Farmers Hatti, Ibrahim and Hurmat, of Dhana village in Haryana's Mewat district, died several years ago - the first two in 2001; Hurmat in 2006. But according to the Haryana Horticulture Department, they applied for - and received - subsidy under the National Mission on Micro Irrigation (NMMI) in 2011. "When we went to the district horticulture department office to claim subsidy in 2013, we were told...
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