-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A 100-metre area on either side of Ganga between Haridwar and Unnao (Uttar Pradesh) will be a "no-construction, no-development zone", the National Green Tribunal ruled on Thursday while ordering a green compensation of Rs 50,000 on anyone dumping waste in the river. In a 543-page judgment on advocate MC Mehta's petition on Ganga pollution, the NGT also directed that no dumping or Landfill could come up...

-TheWire.in The Maharashtra government’s Rs 34,000-crore farm loan waiver may not provide much relief to small and marginal farmers in Marathwada, who are caught in the debt trap of private moneylenders. Latur: Venkat Balbim Bhise, a farmer who owns three acres of Land in Bisewagholi village, in Maharashtra’s Latur district, is in his early thirties. But anger bordering on fatalism is writ large over his weary face. Venkat owes almost Rs 3.5...

-The Economic Times Farmers are agitated. Loan waivers have not stemmed protests or farmer suicides. This is a multidimensional problem and also a huge political opportunity for parties that can think constructively. Waiving loans is bad policy. It adds to the fiscal stress of states, straining under the electricity utility debt they have taken over. The states would undo the Centre’s hard-wrought fiscal discipline, scaring rating agencies. Waived loans bring little benefit to...

-PTI PM Narendra Modi had alleged large- scale corruption in the Ghaziabad Development Authority during the UP Assembly election campaign Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government has ordered CAG audit of three industrial development authorities—Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway—which are facing allegations of irregularities and corruption. The controversy over allowing CAG access to these authorities had erupted during the UP Assembly election campaign when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had alleged large- scale corruption...

-Deccan Chronicle The slogan was that there would never again be scarcity of food because we can now make “bread from air”. There are two distinct futures of food and farming. One leads to a dead end. A dead planet: poisons and chemical monocultures spreading; farmers committing suicide due to debt for seeds and chemicals; children dying due to lack of food; people dying because of chronic diseases spreading due to nutritionally empty, toxic...