-Hindustan Times Barmer district collector Himanshu Gupta said traditional water bodies will be revived under MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act). Barmer: The Rajasthan government plans to revive traditional water bodies to fight drinking water crisis in drought-affected areas, officials said. In the absence of adequate monsoon rain, people have been depending on traditional water bodies in remote desert areas of western Rajasthan. Barmer district collector Himanshu Gupta said traditional water...

-Down to Earth Reflections on Supreme Court order to evict ‘illegitimate’ tribals from the forests There is an ominous significance to the February 13, 2019 order of the Supreme Court on “illegitimate” forest-dwellers. When we FIRst heard of it, we felt a rising dismay and shock at this judicial legitimation of unparalleled atrocity against the tribals. The order is nothing less than the final legitimised expropriation of the tribal communities (poor landless)...

-The Economic Times The FIRst Lok Sabha election in which each EVM was 100% backed by a VVPAT and in which physical verification of VVPAT slips has been done- concluded with a full clean chit to the machines. Just as the verdict of the Lok Sabha election is loud and clear on May 23, so is the verdict on the much maligned EVMs and VVPATs. The FIRst Lok Sabha election in which each...

  The Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation (MoWR, RD & GR) in its latest report has identified arsenic hotspots across the country, most notably in the states of Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Please consult chart-3 to get an idea about the geographical spread of arsenic hotspots in India. On the basis of arsenic concentration in the range 0.01-0.05 mg per litre...

-Hindustan Times The data is extracted by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and merged with Trivedi Centre for Political Data’s (TCPD) own candidates’ data set. In this piece, we look at variation in reported wealth between the 2019 candidates of the two national parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress, breaking it down by declared occupation. To do that, we cross the occupation and net assets data contained in the affidavits...