-The Indian Express The scheme should be refocused towards creating durable assets in agriculture. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has a significant influence on agricultural operations and cultivation costs. If its present focus on community works can be reoriented to proactively promote improvements on the landholdings of small and marginal farmers through the creation of durable assets, it will be beneficial for agricultural productivity and incomes. Critics say that...

-The Tribune The community has to pay the cost of environmental degradation if sustainable agricultural practices are not followed. Food can also be produced by in-built provisions for ecological services. For this, sustainability issues have to be addressed with policy support. An ecosystem is a dynamic, complex, functional unit of diverse living organisms, physical environment and humans are its integral part. The wellbeing of mankind depends upon food, water, fibre, medicine, flood...

-The Hindustan Times Jaipur: Keeping in view the possibility of poor monsoon this year, the state agriculture department has submitted a contingency crop plan - Kharif 2014 -to the disaster and relief department. In the plan, the agriculture department has suggested that through proper technical guidance to farmers loss in agricultural production could be curbed in case of weak or non-uniform monsoon in the state. The department has given various suggestions including...

-The Hindu   We need freeways, but we also need forests. Crimes against women have been constantly in the news. But crimes against nature remain largely unreported. Given the current climate, with the Intelligence Bureau claiming that non-governmental organisations like the crusading international environmental group Greenpeace, are detrimental to India's progress, and with the ubiquitous ‘foreign hand' making a serendipitous comeback, such crimes are likely to become invisible, noticed only by those who have...

-The Hindu   On the first anniversary of the Uttarakhand disaster, here's a look at issues plaguing the fledgling state. On June 16, it will be a year since Uttarakhand experienced its worst natural disaster. It was also a year of loss, of grief, of recovery and of resilience. While those affected continue to cope and rise, we need to look beyond the disaster in order to unravel the contradictions and challenges that...