-Press Release from Swaraj Abhiyan Following the historic order of the Supreme Court of India in the Swaraj Abhiyan PIL on drought, various peoples movements have taken initiatives to monitor the ground situation of drought relief. Swaraj Abhiyan in association with Ekta Parishad, Jal Biradari and National Alliance of People’s Movements organised Jal-Hal yatra from Latur to Mahoba (21st May to 31st May). Similar yatras were organised in Telangana (2nd to...

-Livemint.com There is an emphasis on increasing farm productivity, but this might not always align with greater profitability While inaugurating the Krishi Mela at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed for a “three-pillared” approach to farming, which included crop farming, agro forestry—that is, planting timber trees along farm peripheries—and animal husbandry. This is an important enunciation of how Indian agriculture works as an integrated system in...

-TheWire.in Centre and state governments have not followed through on providing food grains, mid-day meals, loans or MGNREGA payments. New Delhi: Six people’s movements and organisations that have come together as an informal consortium to monitor the response of governments to the drought situation in large parts of the country slammed the Narendra Modi government as well as the states for their collective failure to act when nearly half the country’s Population...

-The Indian Express According to a survey conducted by the Registrar General of India, Punjab is a vegetarian state and Telengana has the highest Population of non-vegetarians in the country. A recently-released survey conducted by the Registrar General of India (RGI) in 2014 busts so many myths about the vegetarian and non-vegetarian divide in the country. A big surprise lies in the fact that the land of butter chicken is predominantly vegetarian. There...

-The Indian Express Muslims have among the lowest suicide rates in the country at 7. The suicide rate among Dalits in Gujarat and Tripura is nearly 1½ times the overall suicide rate in each state. This emerges from government data collected on suicides across the country based on caste and religion. The data, collected by NCRB in 2014 but never published, were accessed by The Indian Express through RTI. They show the average...