-The Telegraph Dairy farmer Nivrutti Bhagwan Gaikwad, 42, wanted to take no chances with nature. A hardworking and enterprising man, he built his cattle shed scientifically in consultation with livestock experts, installing air coolers and filtered-water pipelines for his cattle, building separate compartments for the cows and the buffaloes, and erecting a fodder godown. He used high-quality cans to collect and transport the 180 litres of milk his 50 cows and buffaloes produced...

-Reuters Millions of people in Maharashtra are at serious risk of hunger after two years of low rainfall, coupled with poor management of water resources, have left dams empty, farmland parched and cattle emaciated, aid agencies warned on Thursday. Maharashtra -- one of the country's biggest producers of sugar, pulses, cotton and soybeans -- is reeling from the worst drought in more than four decades after receiving less than 50 percent of...

-Live Mint Calls for govt action in case of Maharashtra should persuade even the staunchest supporters of benign govt intervention to do a rethink The drought situation in Maharashtra has attracted some amount of political attention, with the Union government announcing a Rs1,207 crore debt relief package in March. This is apart from relief measures announced by the state government. While experts have flayed the mismanagement of the situation by the...

-Rediff.com As people in drought-hit parts of Maharashtra face livelihood challenges, concerns have been raised over the possibility of girls from these areas being allegedly trafficked to Goa for flesh trade, according to a prominent NGO in Panaji. Past experiences have shown how girls and women were trafficked and pushed into sex trade, when calamities like natural disaster or conflicts happen, leaving people helpless, NGO ARZ (Anyay Rahit Zindagi) director Arun Pandey...

-The Hindu Ahmedabad: Going by the Gujarat government's figures, memorandums of understanding (MoUs) for Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) worth $876 billion were signed during its five biannual Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summits from 2003 to 2011 and a whopping 84 per cent of the projects have already been implemented or are under implementation. This would mean Gujarat has overtaken all of China, whose FDI inflows during this period were to the tune...