-Down to Earth India's villages miss a golden chance to become drought-proof as more MGNREGA projects grind to a halt Almost half of India is currently under drought; for many districts this is the second-consecutive drought. Given this, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) should have been the key scheme to not only mitigate impacts of drought but also employ people in distress for earning. But an analysis of...

-Down to Earth In the 1990s, non-profits and farmers themselves built check dams; today, the government does it, without proper research or site selection Fifty-four-year old Dineshbhai Babariya has just harvested a 20 quintal cotton crop, his second harvest in the last one year in his four bigha (1.6 acre) farm in the Jasapar village of Gujarat’s Saurashtra region. August 2018 was the last time the village in Rajkot district received around 228...

-The Hindu It is shocking that a democratic government is seeking to strengthen the colonial-era Indian Forest Act The Indian Forest Act, 1927 was a remarkable piece of expropriation in the name of Conservation. The British government carried out one of the largest land expropriations in history, where the rights to occupy and use forests were transferred from communities with customary and historical property rights to the colonial Central government. The act...

-Mongabay.com * The Marathwada region in Maharashtra is in the midst of another drought. While most of the area is dry, some villages practising watershed development are surprisingly green. * In the absence of political interventions some villages are going into self-help mode. Villagers allege vested interests in ‘man-made’ drought. * Lack of policy changes and political will have also been blamed for current situation. * Meena Menon travelled extensively through the drought-hit districts...

-The Telegraph Some clauses of the draft of the Indian Forest Act 2019 are extraordinarily undemocratic Forests are considered planetary resources of great importance: as carbon sinks, as repositories for biodiversity, as effective tools for local climate control, and as a source of timber and related produce. Forests have been dwelling places for people, too. It is important from the point of view of sustainable development that forests be preserved and biodiversity...