-The Hindu 2015’s El Niño on course to being the strongest ever. The highest daily rainfall in a century. Freak weather conditions on one day. The hottest-ever Indian Ocean. The strongest-ever El Niño. The hottest year on record. The bad news is that a perfect storm of meteorological conditions combined to create Chennai’s worst-ever deluge last week, exacerbated in no small part by civic infrastructure pushed to its limit and systemic dysfunction. The...

-The Indian Express Vidarbha’s farmers have escaped the worst of drought this year and hope to gain from high arhar prices. Wardha (Maharashtra): About 95 km from Nagpur and to the left of National Highway-7 leading to Hyderabad is a 14-acre farm that is now the cynosure of many eyes. This field, at Daroda village in Hinganghat tehsil of Wardha district, radiates only green with no traces of white or brown dots —...

-Hindustan Times India, the father of the nation famously said, lives in its villages, or, as many call it, Bharat. There is no doubt that a great shift is underway: As 600 million move out of rural areas over the next 35 years, India will need about 500 new cities. But unless Bharat offers a fraction of the hope that ushered in Narendra Modi’s era, the ongoing urban transformation of India...

-Livemint.com   The main focus of the survey was to find out if the drought and adverse weather over the past few years is turning into a famine    New Delhi: Even as half of India is reeling under a second consecutive drought year, a survey of the chronically drought-striken Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh has unearthed grim details of crop loss, disputes over water, starvation, and deaths due to hunger and malnutrition. The...

-The Hindu Mumbai: The Maharashtra government will seek a Rs. 4,300-crore financial assistance package from the Centre for providing succour to over 16,000 drought-affected villages, State Relief and Rehabilitation Minister Eknath Khadse said on Saturday. Mr. Khadse said a memorandum seeking funds, expected to benefit over 60 lakh farmers in the drought-affected region, would be sent to New Delhi on Sunday. The Minister, who had earlier declared over 14,708 villages drought-affected, said the...