-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: A winter rain shortfall of 63% in January and February across India has led to reservoir levels dropping in the major river basins of the Sabarmati, Kaveri and Tapi. While agriculture ministry officials said this will not impact the rabi crop significantly, farmers in Gujarat--where water level in the Sardar Sarovar dam is below normal--are worried about cotton Sowing. “In the current situation, there is deficient water...

-TheWire.in Environmentalist and water management expert Ravi Chopra says river inter-linking will sow the seeds for future conflicts between states. There is nothing new about the proposed river-interlinking project being pushed by the government, and this ‘unnecessary excess’ of a project will create more problems than it promises to solve, says environmentalist and water management expert, Dr Ravi Chopra, the director of People’s Science Institute, Dehradun and a managing trustee of the...

-ThePrint.in The FM knew that the media would not spend that much of time and attention on farmers. He knew that on farmers, you need not put your money where your mouth is. I type the finance minister’s name very carefully. He is “Jaitley”, and not “Jaitlie”. I bow to India’s Parliament and note that the spelling of his name is a matter of national interest. Now I wait for Parliament to...

-TheWire.in The Swaminathan Commission was clear in its recommendations, and the rationale offered by the NITI Aayog to rule out the use of comprehensive cost is dubious at best. Finance minister Arun Jaitley had announced in Budget 2018-19 that his “government has decided to keep MSP [minimum support price] for the all unannounced crops of kharif at least at one and half times of their production cost”. This announcement set off a flurry...

-Hindustan Times Within a month of retaining power for the sixth consecutive time, the Vijay Rupani-led BJP government appealed farmers to not sow any crops this summer. Ahmedabad: Bhupat Lakum, a farmer from Adroda village near Gujarat’s Ahmedabad, was glued to his television set when Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over a ceremony marking the completion of the Sardar Sarovar Dam on September 17 last year. The event terminated the 57-year-old project on...