-The Hindu The interaction between people and land is as old as human evolution. When early hunter-gatherers started to settle down in the Neolithic transition and practise agriculture, they began to change their relationship with land in a major way. Starting with the Holocene, approximately 11,500 years ago, many plants were domesticated for agriculture. These and the associated social and technological changes led to dense human settlements that then paved the...

-The Economic Times A small village called Khanauri in Punjab's Sangrur district has become a macabre hotspot. People come here to peer down at the Bhakra Main Line canal hoping to catch sight of dead bodies that get held up on the sluice gates. They are not ghouls ­ they are looking for kin or friends who have disappeared. The canal runs unhindered like an arrow for 159 km through Punjab's eastern...

-The Hindu Business Line Rising input costs have shrunk profits, making cultivation unviable. Easy access to credit and better MSPs can help The unremitting wave of farmer suicides has resurfaced, now haunting the farming heartlands of Tamil Nadu. Troubled by a severely deficit monsoon which triggered the worst drought in 140 years, over 100 farmers, mostly in the Cauvery delta, have reportedly committed suicide during a period of one month, and the...

-Hindustan Times Ranchi: While only 1.9% government schools in rural Jharkhand do not have toilets, students of 35.3% government schools in these areas are debarred from using toilets, which are despite having the facility in their campus, the latest Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER) has said, highlighting the lackadaisical approach of the government in maintaining the infrastructure they invest in. In 2016, the state government claimed that almost all 40,000 odd...

-Village Square High levels of arsenic in the Water supply is afflicting many villages in eastern Uttar Pradesh but the government hasn’t been able to design and implement any program to contain the menace Ballia (Uttar Pradesh): Ekawana Rajpur is a village in Belhari administrative block along the banks of the Ganga and 16km from Ballia town in eastern Uttar Pradesh where villagers commonly suffer from afflictions such as itchy skin lesions,...