-Newsclick.in A combination of fund squeeze and political aversion has deprived lakhs of people from getting MGNREGS work, even though wages are very low. As the job crisis rages unabated across the country, demand for work under the rural jobs guarantee programme (MGNREGS – Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) has risen dramatically in the past few years. In Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the two big states where polling for Assembly...

-The Hindu What happened? At the end of October, the Maharashtra government declared drought in 151 taluks in 26 of 36 districts, mostly in the Marathwada region and in the north. Experts said rainfall had been below par in large swathes of the State and faulty water conservation methods had added to the problem. How serious is it? The total number of villages affected by the drought — though the government has not shared...

-The Indian Express For governments both at the Centre and in the concerned states, the most sensible option is to act fast. After two years of relatively good rains, large parts of Maharashtra (especially the Marathwada region and the adjoining districts of Jalgaon, Nashik, Ahmednagar, Sholapur, Amravati and Yavatmal), North Gujarat, Saurashtra, Kutch and North Karnataka are reeling under drought. What is different this time is that it has been induced...

-The Indian Express One-fourth of the urban population lives in these small towns (20,000 to 1,00,000 population). These 7 crore people need amenities to match up to their ‘urban’ status. Many of these towns may not be in the vicinity of big cities. Small towns in India are something of an oxymoron. They are far removed from cities in character and appearance and are constantly struggling to establish their “urbanness”. A...

-The Telegraph 1 lakh farmers and farm labourers plan to march towards Parliament on November 30. But what do they want? Mumbai: We, who are not farmers, tend to think of farmers as a catch-all word. A word that signifies to us a people who work to cultivate something. I have no idea why. I can never see ‘journalists’, for instance, as a catch-all word, even if some others do. This is...