-Scroll.in Landless farmers are left out of Telangana’s Rythu Bandhu, but nominally included in Odisha’s Kalia. For two decades, Chinthanna Linganna, 55, has cultivated agricultural land leased from others in Talamadugu village in Telangana’s Adilabad district. He currently rents 20 acres of land to grow cotton. Since May, the people who own this land have received cheques of up to Rs 1.6 lakh from the state government as agricultural investment support. Linganna...

-Down to Earth The draft, which has been prepared with focus on conservation and climate change, has been sent to states seeking comments The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) has finalised the first draft of the comprehensive amendments to the Indian Forest Act, 1927 (IFA). The 123-page draft provides definitions to important terms that were missing from the law. The draft has been prepared based on the Inputs of a...

-The Hindu Final document at Nairobi tones down language, lacks timeline. An ambitious resolution piloted by India to phase out single-use plastics by 2025, was watered down at the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) that concluded on Friday in Nairobi. At the World Environment Day summit on June 5, 2018 here, Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had pledged to eliminate single-use plastics from India by...

-The Hindu Business Line The Union Cabinet has relaxed a condition that requires small and marginal farmers to seed their Aadhaar numbers with their bank accounts for getting the second instalment of payments under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) scheme. While clearing the scheme on February 1, the government had made it mandatory for farmers with less than 2 hectares of land to get Aadhaar seeding done for the second...

-Scroll.in The government’s choice of partners has raised concerns. In June 2018, the Andhra Pradesh government announced an ambitious programme to bring all 80 lakh hectares of its cultivable land under agroecological farming by 2024. Agroecology emphasises minimising external, artificial Inputs by using resources available in the local ecosystem so as to make farming sustainable and environment-friendly. Called Andhra Pradesh Climate Resilient Zero Budget Natural Farming, the programme seeks to wean away 60...