-Down to Earth Tribunal calls for doing away with general permissions given to commercial entities to withdraw groundwater The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has called for commercial entities to follow new rules for getting permission to extract groundwater. Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) will now form the basis of granting such permissions, the NGT bench said. The Union Ministry of Jal Shakti (water) and the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) were ordered by the...

-The Indian Express Given this uncertainty over the reach of PM-KISAN and its targeting, the relevance of the scheme needs to be carefully evaluated during this period. The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) is the first universal basic income-type of scheme targeted towards landed farmers. It was introduced in December 2018 to manage agricultural stress. Initially, the scheme was targeted at small and medium landed farmers, but with the declining growth...

-Livemint.com A few large state economies that may have seen off the worst of the pandemic are showing early signs of economic revival In early June, the Centre left lockdown orders to the states with the hope to kickstart economic recovery. The effect has been mixed across different states, partly due to their varying approaches to tackle the pandemic. While the picture looked the brightest for Rajasthan and Delhi in July, it...

-Hindustan Times The study is significant as it reviewed the under sediment cores derived from the Krishna Godavari basin of the Bay of Bengal to understand how the monsoon rainfall pattern has changed in the past 2,000 years. Warming of Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean is likely to weaken the India monsoon further in the near future, which could be accentuated by land mass changes across the country, says a...

-Business Standard Despite the drop, however, demand is almost 71% more than July 2019 After seeing a surge in May and June, demand for work under Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) tapered a bit in July as casual labourers returned to work in farms for sowing kharif crops. However, demand was still much higher compared to the previous years, underlining the scheme’s vital role in providing employment to the rural poor,...