-Livemint.com/ AP Hundreds of millions of people in at least 13 states are reeling from severe drought, a situation that is expected to worsen in the coming months Shahapur: Shantabai Babulkar’s day begins before dawn with a 5 kilometer trek across barren fields and dusty scrubland to fetch water from a distant well for her family. The two metal pots of muddy water that Babulkar, 58, balances on her head and a...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: As many as 882 deaths in five years, nearly four-fifths of them in a single state. These statistics do not pertain to some inexorable natural calamities. These are figures of tribal children who lost their lives in state-run residential schools across the country between 2010 and 2015. These are numbers of innocent lives lost seemingly on account of sheer official apathy, manifest in the lack of basic...

-The Hindu Drought has devastated once-prosperous Latur. In this two-part series Sharad Vyas (text) and Vivek Bendre (photographs) report from the parched district. Latur: The water train chugging into Latur last week captured national attention. But it took the spotlight away from the daily struggle of lakhs of people facing the immediate consequences of extended drought and acute water scarcity in Latur district. The vagaries of nature have already taken their toll:...

-The Hindu Business Line A national platform for agri-produce can be a game-changer. But persuading States is key Most political regimes in India brand themselves as pro-farmer, and so it is ironic that the country’s market for agricultural produce is among its least liberalised. Given the perishable nature of agri-produce, the farmer is already up against structural constraints such as lack of scale economies and the rudimentary state of storage and logistics...

-The Indian Express There are several measures, such as crop diversification, that can help India achieve this goal Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s desire to double the income of farmers by the year 2022, that he expressed while addressing a farmers’ rally in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, on February 28, 2016, has evoked strong responses from various analysts, experts and the media. The goal has been dubbed as impossible and unrealistic. On the very...