-Livemint.com A government report says nearly 11,500 of Maharashtra’s 40,000 villages face water scarcity due to a combination of less than normal rainfall and consequent exploitation of groundwater Mumbai: The Maharashtra government on Tuesday declared a ‘drought-like situation’ in 180 tehsils , more than half the 353 of these administrative units in the state, in an acknowledgement of looming agrarian distress. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said after a cabinet meeting that his government...

-Scroll.in In August Delhi High Court set aside the state government’s March 2017 notification raising minimum wages. Lata Rani, 32, is a caretaker at a Delhi government school in Jhandewalan. She joined in 2015 for a salary of Rs 7,300 a month which was raised to Rs 11,000 in March 2017. When she went to collect her pay this month, Rani was in for a shock: her salary had been cut...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: Widespread privatisation of public goods in many societies is systematically eliminating human rights protections and further marginalising those living in poverty, according to a new report, released by the United Nations (UN). The 25-page report by the UN is eye-opening in the light of Indian government think-tank Niti Aayog releasing Guidelines for Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) for tackling Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in government-run district hospitals. Niti Aayog's...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The South Delhi Municipal Corporation has set the ball rolling for installation of two plants in the Najafgarh zone — one at Nangloi and another at Goyla Dairy Colony — for processing 400MT of cattle dung. The civic body on Monday gave administrative approval to the projects under the Swachh Bharat Mission and set an 18-month deadline for their completion. A senior corporation official put the...

-Livemint.com Loan waivers and electricity subsidies are band-aids at best; a deeper transformation is needed The past few days have neatly summed up the scale and nature of the challenges facing India’s agriculture sector. First, the provisional agriculture census 2015-16 showed that landholdings have continued their decades-long trend of fragmentation, leading to a further rise in the proportion of small and marginal farmers. Then, 30,000 farmers, who had started their march from...