-Down to Earth While other states had declared drought months ago, Gujarat govt kept calling it a “scarcity of water” While other states like Karnataka, Maharshtra, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh had declared drought at the very offset of the southwest monsoon, and began work on mitigation measures, the Gujarat government remained silent despite receiving deficit rainfall in most of the districts. Until yesterday, the Gujarat government had been terming the situation...

-Mongabay.com * Indian government enacted the Forest Rights Act in 2006 to correct the historic injustice done to tribal people and forest dwellers but the implementation of the landmark legislation has been far from satisfactory. * A recent study reveals a large variation in the outcomes of claims submitted under the FRA Act across states. It found that states with more forest cover have higher claim distribution rates, while states with presence...

Just a few days ahead of the Kisan Mukti March in Delhi NCR, the provisional results of the Agriculture Census 2015-16 became available in the public domain. The report, among other things, highlights the long-term problems affecting Indian agriculture including fragmentation of land holdings (particularly the marginal and small ones) and shrinking average size of farm land. The provisional results of the latest Agriculture Census reveal that at the national level...

-IndiaWaterPortal.org The latest addition to India’s interstate river water conflicts, the Mahanadi will soon go water deficit if Odisha and Chhattisgarh don’t control their hunger for coal-fired power. A new study, Mahanadi: Coal Rich, Water-Stressed sheds light on how both Odisha and Chhattisgarh have locked horns over the distribution of waters of the Mahanadi river. The 851-km-long river originates in the Dhamtari district of Chhattisgarh, flows through the state and then...

-The New Indian Express Odisha, is the only State in the country, to have formulated all tribal bilingual dictionaries and trilingual tribal language proficiency modules. BHUBANESWAR: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Saturday unveiled 21 tribal dictionaries and proficiency modules. The State Government through its Academy of Tribal Language and Culture (ATLC) has brought out the tribal bilingual dictionaries for multilingual education and tribal trilingual proficiency modules to preserve and promote tribal languages. Odisha,...