-Outlook Mumbai: Maharashtra government plans to formulate a new social forestry policy which will be implemented in non-forest areas of the state to increase green cover. "In Maharashtra, the forest land is about 19 to 20 per cent, which comes under the Forest Department. The Social Forestry Department has decided to provide green cover to 80 per cent non-forest area and will elicit co-operation from the local self government bodies in this...

-The Times of India Everyone agrees that India needs to deliver social protection to the aam admi; the forthcoming Food Security Bill is one such attempt. Everyone also agrees that the government service delivery pipelines are riddled with leakages and largescale corruption. Direct cash transfers have been proposed as a way to remedy this defective system. However, as could be expected, the debate has become polarised, with one side believing that cash...

-The Hindu Maharashtra government was well aware of these irregularities in 2010, but chose not to act   The Maharashtra government was well aware in 2010 of the gross irregularities in Vidarbha’s irrigation projects after a damning report by retired Water Resources Secretary Nandkumar Vadnere, who examined 11 major dams, 27 medium ones and 53 small projects as part of a one-member inquiry committee. In the second part of his report, Mr. Vadnere...

-The Hindu The proposal for an urban health initiative with focus on primary health care for the urban poor has been cleared by the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) and will soon be placed before the Cabinet. This was announced by Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad during a meeting of the Mission Steering Group of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) here on Tuesday. There has been an on-going tussle...

-The Hindu One in eight people, or 12.5 per cent of the world’s population, is chronically undernourished today says the latest State of Food Insecurity (SOFI) report. The grave ethical and practical implications of this abominable statistic from the three Rome-based United Nations agencies are obvious. Not least because mass hunger is a man-made phenomenon. Historically, hunger and starvation have been caused not by shortfalls in food production but rather by...