-Mongabay.com * December 2018 is the official deadline for the Land acquisition for the bullet train project but till now not even one percent of the required Land is acquired. A court case is already going on in the Gujarat High Court against the Land acquisition process undertaken by the Gujarat government. * Despite documents showing that the project has the potential to cause social conflict and have adverse environmental impacts, the...

-Livemint.com Loan waivers and electricity subsidies are band-aids at best; a deeper transformation is needed The past few days have neatly summed up the scale and nature of the challenges facing India’s agriculture sector. First, the provisional agriculture census 2015-16 showed that Landholdings have continued their decades-long trend of fragmentation, leading to a further rise in the proportion of small and marginal farmers. Then, 30,000 farmers, who had started their march from...

-The Hindu Bhuira's women are coping with the higher workload by creating vastly more flexible family and community structures. And they are simultaneously pushing towards modernity much faster than their neighbours. Everyone in the village sneaks a glance when Upasana Kumari drives her White Maruti 800 to work. “Driving a car is intoxicating,” says Kumari. A winding, muddy, single lane road that starts from the edge of the hillock where Kumari’s house...

-The Indian Express Getting the right remuneration is the most critical issue facing farmers. Government must provide policy, institutional framework for procurement. The farmer and his income is an important theme of discussion these days. A lot is being written on ways to increasing, and doubling, the farmers’ incomes by the year 2022. Viewed arithmetically, the income of a farmer is a function of three things — the cost of cultivation, production...

-Mongabay.com * Chhattisgarh has a strong mineral base, forests and a large tribal population. As a result there are many conflicts over Land use and access to natural resources. * The Forest Rights Act 2006 has given legal space for tribal communities to access their resources. Chhattisgarh has achieved good numbers in the implementation of individual and forest rights. * However, there are problems in the qualitative implementation of the rights and these...