The Punjab government’s policy to provide free power to the farm sector has led to alarming depletion of its groundwater besides unleashing a huge power subsidy burden of more than Rs 3,000 crore, the Planning Commission has said. The Commission has asked the SAD-BJP government in the state to do away with free power to the sector and begin charging “appropriate tariff” for it. In a letter to Punjab Chief...

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will head the promised Group of Ministers (GoM) that will examine the modalities of enumeration of caste in Census 2011, senior government sources told TheHindu. The GoM was constituted on June 4, nine days after the Union Cabinet took a decision to do so. Its 10 other members are the representatives of all the Congress' partners in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA): Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Defence...

In India (and elsewhere) we have several people’s struggles which are protesting against displacement and trying to protect their sustainable life-styles and livelihoods based on farmlands, pastures and forests, rivers and coastal areas. These struggles involve farmers, forest-produce gatherers (tribals particularly), pastoral people, fisherfolk and others with related livelihoods. These traditional livelihoods have been passed on from generation to generation, but are now increasingly threatened on a scale never seen...

Water may no longer be a free commodity even for the agriculture sector. In order to deal with an imminent water crisis that could haunt the country in the next few decades, the Centre has commissioned the Planning Commission to formulate a policy on integrated water management. Plan panel deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told TOI that the document will be ready by September. Admitting that water crisis is more...

Water, water everywhere, and so many committees to deal with it. On top of so many ministries and committees that think about water, the government has decided that India needs a Water Mission. Apart from the water resources ministry, the ministries of rural development, agriculture and environment and forests are actively involved in water conservation work. Besides, the river basin authorities are also supposed to look after water management in...