-TheWire.in In The Vanishing Stepwells of India, Victoria Lautman articulates how a traditional water conservation system was foolishly destroyed when the British took the reins. It is not difficult to comprehend the importance of water conservation. The resource is as precious and far more valuable than gold. Water will always be scarce and in arid, dry regions, the liquid is worshipped. It is an integral element in rituals that manifest faith. All...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Puducherry administration has approached the Union food ministry to seek a return to the system of distributing subsidised foodgrain, instead of crediting the subsidy to the bank accounts of beneficiaries. The Union territory administration has claimed the beneficiaries are not using the subsidy amount to buy foodgrain. "The chief minister recently put up this proposal before Union minister Ram Vilas paswan. The UT administration...

-VillageSquare.in Strict parameters set by the central government has made it tougher for the states to declare a drought and seek relief funds from New Delhi Mumbai (Maharashtra): The Indian government is leaving no stone unturned to fight the occurrence of drought in the country. The Manual for Drought Management, released in December 2016 by the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, prescribes “new scientific indices and parameters” for a “more...

-The Financial Express Over 14 crore households who cultivate on land owned by others under a formal lease agreement or even under a temporary arrangement overseen by the gram panchayats or other official functionaries may soon start getting assorted sops doled out to “farmers” by the government just as their land-owing counterparts do. According to official sources, the definition of farmer will be changed via a gazzette notification to include cultivators...

-The Economic Times The art of good governance is through trial and error, figuring out what works where and how, and scaling up from below. Only then can one have a solid foundation. Aadhaar literally means something that holds (dhaaran: to hold). The word is interpreted either as a foundation or base (such as, to a building), or a container (such as, of water), even though given that it is an identity-verifying...