-The Hindu With the era of cheap, bountiful water having been replaced by increasing supply-and-quality constraints, many international investors are beginning to view water as the new oil There is a popular, tongue-in-cheek saying in America - attributed to the writer Mark Twain, who lived through the early phase of the California Water Wars - that "whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over." It highlights the consequences, even if...

-The Indian Express Pre-legislative scrutiny is a first step towards greater transparency in law-making. The committee of secretaries chaired by the cabinet secretary has decided that all bills proposed by the government should go through a process of pre-legislative scrutiny. This follows the recommendation of the National Advisory Council, which had suggested that all bills be taken through this process in order to garner public feedback at an early stage. Let us quickly...

-The Hindu Increased rebel activity made it impossible for anyone to commute outside Jagargunda unless they left permanently, as the original inhabitants and the new entrants were marked as Salwa Judum supporters, and overtly boycotted by the Maoist-controlled villages surrounding the enclave. In Jagargunda, a large village in south Chhattisgarh, the villagers have been waiting for their winter rations for more than two months. Ordinarily, this would not be news but Jagargunda...

-DNA Maharashtra: To stop the destruction of forests and increase its green cover to 33% as laid down in the national policy, the state forests department has launched a campaign to rope in villagers to voluntarily enable regeneration of forests. It has distributed subsidised LPG cylinders and grants for biogas plants and stall fed and high value milch animals (as against scrub fed cattle) to around 40,000 families living on the periphery...

-The Hindu Abitha, a Ph.D student at the IISc, has come up with Algiculture, a technique to grow paddy along with an oil-producing algae, helping farmers earn additional income Hyderabad: Good news for paddy farmers! They can now doubly benefit by growing an additional crop without incurring additional cost, apart from contributing to the nation's fuel needs. A student of Ph.D at the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bangalore, has devised a technique...