-The Hindu Business Line The draft laws do not take a holistic view of surface and groundwater management. Nor are institutional issues spelt out The draft National Water Framework Bill 2016 was placed in the public domain for comments in end-May by the ministry of water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation. Around the same time, the ministry also placed the Model Bill for the Conservation, Protection, Regulation and Management of Groundwater 2016...

-The Indian Express The current bill does not take into account any of the criticism voiced against an earlier version, proposed under the UPA government in 2013; it continues to ignore the Forest Rights Act. A recent controversial bill that outlines a framework for the utilisation of compensatory afforestation funds is being strongly contested and challenged by civil society actors. It raises important questions that are fundamentally connected to forests: Whose...

-Frontline The inability to resolve pressing problems with respect to the production, distribution and availability of food is one of the important failures of the entire economic reform process. IN the fateful month of July 1991, when the devaluation of the Indian rupee presaged the introduction of a whole series of liberalising economic reforms, agriculture was very far from the minds of most policymakers and commentators. The immediate focus was on...

-HuffingtonPost.in   Going back to the grassroots.   Gone are the days when businesses focused solely on the bottom lines; today more and more corporates are embracing the concept of the 3 Ps: People, Profit, and Planet. As more and more organisations step up to do their bit for the community and the environment, many opportunities are opening up to improve and impact both the urban and especially the rural landscapes. Here's a quick...

-The Hindu Confining it to just the Ministry of Rural Development would be the most retrograde step in democratic decentralisation in over a quarter century. If, as The Hindu’s exclusive on Wednesday indicates, Prime Minister Narendra Modi were to close down the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, it would confirm one’s worst fears about his government’s hypocritical approach to grass-roots democracy for grass-roots development. This was a lacuna that was evident in the ‘Gujarat...