-PTI New Delhi: The spectre of a drought looms over large parts of the country with 40 per cent of its land mass receiving "deficient" rainfall. "As of today, 47 per cent of the country has witnessed normal rainfall, 40 per cent deficient and merely 13 per cent excess precipitation. The overall deficiency has increased to 12 per cent," India Meteorological Department said, adding with the southwest monsoon expected to start withdrawing...
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Marathwada: India’s emerging farmer suicide capital -Kavitha Iyer
-The Indian Express As many parts of the country reel under a back-to-back drought, Kavitha Iyer reports from the region that’s at the centre of the crisis. Weeks before hanging himself from a tree on his farm on June 1 this year, Kalyan Khomne, 55, read out a newspaper report to his son Shahdev. “It was about a farmer’s suicide in our taluka,” says 26-year-old Shahdev. His village, Nandurghat, and the nearby...
More »Banking is a child’s play for these slum kids in Ranchi -Saumya Mishra
-Hindustan Times Ranchi: Bankers come in pint size at an urban slum in Ranchi. And they run a bank for the children, by the children and of the children. Ten-year-old Nisha Kumari has an account in the bank — Children’s Development Khazana (CDK)—which opened in 2014. And her small pleasures of childhood is not held hostage to the priorities of her poor family. “During Durga Puja last year, a few relatives had visited...
More »Failed crops, parched fields, now Marathwada faces the great thirst -Kavitha Iyer
-The Indian Express Wells dry up across 8 districts, storage down to less than 8%, residents trudge long distances, officials brace for worst drinking water crisis in 40 years. Beed/ Parbhani (Maharashtra): Seventy-year-old Parobai Shinde, carrying an aluminium pot that has seen better days, is briskly walking the 2-km stretch from her home in Manyarwadi village in Georai taluka in Beed district to Bharat Sonmali’s field. Sonmali is reploughing his 30...
More »Sonalde Desai, Prem Vashishtha and Omkar Joshi, lead researchers of the report entitled 'MGNREGA: A Catalyst for Rural Transformation', interviewed by Priyanka Kotamraju
Two recent reports show that this social sector scheme has had a causal impact in improving lives, especially for women and children Fourteen million people escaped falling into poverty under the world’s largest anti-poverty programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). In 10 years of its existence, the scheme reduced poverty by 32 per cent. Recent data also shows that more women are drawing cash incomes, more children...
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