Groundwater, which irrigates half of Indian agriculture and provides 85% of rural drinking consumption, is an increasingly scarce resource. There is a growing understanding that it must be approached as a common property resource for collective benefit. It is best understood and managed by those who live near them and use them rather than agencies who visit sporadically - that is the central premise of efforts around participatory groundwater management....

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A United Nations (UN) report has warned India that it is at greater risk by opting for public private partnership (PPP) mode of investment for raising its public infrastructure where the government has less control over its executing private partners and the latter has little interest in long term safety of the projects. A UN study, the Global Assessment Report (GAR) on disaster risk reduction, released...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Come July and our babus will be back in school. The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) will begin an e-governance training module called the e-Governance Executive Training Programme (eGEP). This is the first such national-level programme for officers at the level of under secretary, section officer, deputy director, assistant director, tehsil and block level officer or equivalent. They will be nominated by their department...

-Tehelka.com There are few figures from the adivasi community in India who have made a bigger dent in the collective imagination of the country than Dayamani Barla. The "iron lady of Jharkhand" has been instrumental in articulating adivasi struggles against displacement and deprivation on national and international platforms. Dayamani, who was recently imprisoned in Jharkhand for her involvement in the Nagri people's movement, has won the first Ellen L Lutz Indigenous...

-The Business Standard Why have Indian authorities woken up to the Ranbaxy case only now? The matter had been simmering for several years The Ranbaxy affair is one of the darkest chapters of India's business history. The company has admitted it fudged data so that it could launch its products in the United States. It has now paid $500 million as a penalty to settle the case. It is worse than Ramalinga...