-The Times of India LUCKNOW: Union minister for rural development Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday shot off another letter to the Akhilesh Yadav government, accusing it of having failed to spend money given under the central schemes. This is Jairam's sixth dispatch to the SP government since it came to power in March, 2012. The letter to the chief minister focuses on the implementation of the Integrated watershed Management Programme (IWMP), a centrally-funded...

-World Resources Institute India struggles with water scarcity, a problem that poses especially huge implications for the country's food security and rural livelihoods. The country has long-battled its scarcity issues through watershed Development, a participatory approach to improve water management through afforestation and reforestation, sustainable land management, soil and water conservation, water-harvesting infrastructure, and social interventions. But while watershed development has been employed in communities throughout India, its potential long-term costs...

-The Indian Express Internal migration has risen, and for good reason. Policy must shift to support internal mobility, not control it. As India undergoes the transition from a predominantly rural society to one that is urbanising rapidly, there are inevitable flows of people from rural to urban areas. One set of perspectives tells us that this increase in mobility should not be unexpected; after all, classical modernisation and economic development theories do...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Government agencies and departments, regarded as bywords for inefficiency and red tape, have recorded over a billion e-governance transactions so far this year, watershed for the world's largest democracy that is betting on technology to cure its ills. "It is an important milestone for India's e-governance initiative," said J Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology. "With better accessibility and more projects getting completed,...

-The Hindu Villages get infrastructure to conserve water and recharge wells Madurai: The district's dry pockets in the Usilampatti and Sedapatti blocks are alive with development activity aimed at mitigating the hardship faced by drought-hit farmers. watershed and percolation ponds are being created in these regions. On the lines of initiatives taken by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and non-governmental organisations, the State government is establishing watershed projects to...