-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...
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Chhattisgarh: Maoist-hit areas don't have toilets, but get the ODF tag -Dipankar Ghose
-The Indian Express In Sukma, 49 of 146 gram panchayats are registered as “inaccessible”. In Dantewada and Kondagaon districts, 30 of 83 and 15 of 99 districts are inaccessible according to data collected by the government in October 2017. Bijapur / Sukma (Bastar): Mangal Ram doesn’t understand why the question. All his 60 years, the answer to where he goes to relieve himself has always been the same, he says: “The jungle”....
More »In Fact: Why India doesn't lose forest cover -Jay Mazoomdaar
-The Indian Express Despite deforestation and human encroachment, the country’s forest cover has remained stable around 20% since Independence. This is because the loss of natural old-growth Forests is compensated on paper by expanding monoculture plantations. Since Independence, a fifth of India’s land has consistently been under Forests. The population has increased more than three times since 1947, and from 1951-80, a total 42,380 sq km of forestland was diverted — some...
More »PM's plan for free gas connections is failing its objective - as government had been warned it would -Nitin Sethi & Aroon Deep
-Scroll.in A study commissioned in 2015 said that for the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana to succeed, the price of gas cylinders would have to be reduced. In an interview to TimesNow on the weekend, Prime Minister Narendra Modi extolled the virtues of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, which offers free gas connections to the rural poor. “What will be the ease of living for a poor woman, who uses a stove...
More »Bamboo not a tree: Parliament passes Bill amending Forest Act
-PTI The Bill permits felling and transit of bamboo grown in non-forest areas. However, bamboo grown on forest lands would continue to be classified as a tree. The Parliament on Wednesday passed a Bill to exclude bamboo from the definition of tree under the Indian Forest Act, claiming it would improve the earnings of tribals and dwellers living around Forests. The Indian Forest (Amendment) Bill, which was adopted by the Lok Sabha on...
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