-The Business Standard Without policy correctives, a water crisis is inevitable In a future India, urban neighbourhoods might well be racked by internecine battles over water. The main reason to fear this dystopia is the astonishing rates at which groundwater is being sucked up from below the earth in this country. Groundwater finds a home in natural aquifers, layers of rock, clay and sand far underground. For thousands of years, Indians...

-Reuters KHAMMAM (India): It was a deal struck almost 40 years ago by a poor, illiterate Indian farmer, driven by desperation after a drought wiped out his crops and left his family close to starvation. The agreement: 10 acres of land, the size of four soccer pitches, for a mere 10 kg (22 lbs) of sorghum grains. "My father-in-law pawned the land for food," said Kowasalya Thati, lifting the hem of...

-The Economic Times It was just a ride in a cycle rickshaw that moved an Assam based veterinary surgeon, Dr Pradip Kumar Sarmah and got him thinking into setting up the concept of 'Rickshaw Bank'. The concept today has changed the lives of more than 10000 rickshaw pullers in six states in India. Dr Pradip Kumar Sarmah (47), the innovator of this concept, explained that majority of the rickshaw pullers drive rented...

Speaking at an international workshop on Equity and Climate Change, held on April 12, the minister for environment and forests, Jayanthi Natarajan, sought to build a consensus on the inter-relationship between equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in the Climate Convention, and the nature of the obligations they entail in the new arrangement that is to be negotiated. By focusing on a technical definition of equity the approach...

The National Advisory Council will ask the Centre to focus the ongoing socio-economic caste census on enumerating and classifying denotified, nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes, or DNTs. The plan is to give these groups priority while issuing unique identity cards and introducing laws that will grant them explicit recognition on the lines of the 1992 statute on minorities. The NAC said special directives must be issued to the housing and urban poverty alleviation...