-The Hindustan Times Mumbai: Indian companies have acquired land more than nine times the size of Delhi on foreign shores, as cultivable land at home is lost to urbanisation, industry and infrastructure projects. Land Matrix, a global land monitoring initiative that tracks land dealings worldwide, placed India among the top 10 countries that have acquired large tracts of land abroad, primarily for agriculture, in Africa and Asia. The country ranks eighth,...

-The Economic Times In the leaky system of welfare delivery, databases are the newest valve that governments are installing to ensure that benefits reach those-and only those -they are intended for. Since December 2012, for instance, the government of Madhya Pradesh has been appending on to the Centre's Socio Economic and Caste Census a host of household-level data: bank account numbers, NREGA card numbers, welfare entitlements, land ownership, whether their house is...

-PTI GWALIOR: Rural Development Ministry would join hands with a leading defence research organisation to push eco-friendly bio-toilets in villages in four states where the menace of open defecation remained unaddressed. Impressed by the achievement of the Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE) in developing low cost bio-toilets, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today said that members of Women Self Help Groups from Bihar, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh would be...

-The Hindu     Unorthodox models of conservation are needed to save this elusive and magnificent big bird "Have you seen the Big Five?" That's the question you will invariably be asked if you visit the East African states. The Big Five, Africa's largest, and thus most prominent, mammals - the lion, the rhino, the leopard, the buffalo and the elephant - have dominated camp fire stories, tourist expectations and the growth of conservation. Across...

-The Hindu While the focus is on pilgrims, nobody is talking about the fate of boys and men who came from their villages in the Mandakini valley to earn during the yatri season It is one week since Uttarakhand's worst disaster in living memory. Flash floods resulting from extremely intense rainfall swept away mountainsides, villages and towns, thousands of people, animals, agricultural fields, irrigation canals, domestic water sources, dams, roads, bridges, and...