-The Times of India MUMBAI: In the last five years, over 28 lakh units of blood and its components were discarded by banks across India, exposing serious loopholes in the nation's blood banking system. If calculated in litres, the cumulative wastage of 6% translates to over 6 lakh litres —a volume enough to fill up 53 water tankers. India faces, on average, a shortfall of 3 million units of blood annually. Lack of...

-The Hindu There is no case for water privatisation. In pushing for it, we are ignoring the key issue, which is better governance, writes Himanshu Thakkar Privatisation of water is unwarranted, unjustified and unnecessary. In pushing for it, we are not really addressing the key issue plaguing the water sector, which is a need for better governance. We need a democratic, transparent, accountable and participatory governance in a bottom-up approach, on each...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Activists and researchers today accused the Centre of systematically curtailing the 100-day rural job scheme by not releasing funds for the payment of beneficiaries, diluting norms to avoid giving compensation and cancelling cards of genuine job-seekers. They said payments to around 10 crore poor workers were getting delayed because of the lack of funds. The Union rural development ministry denied the charges. At a news conference, Nikhil Dey of the...

-TheWire.in Community managed rice banks have replaced defunct government managed rice banks in several areas of Patna district in Bihar. A few years ago, Parbhawati Devi, Bichiya Devi and Meena Devi were landless farm laborers, fully at the mercy of landed farmers for their survival. But things have changed since then. Today, hundreds of women in dozens of villages in Patna district of Bihar, mostly from the marginalised Mahadalit community, have turned...

-The Economic Times MUMBAI: Bucking the trend of farm loan waivers set in motion by Uttar Pradesh, the Maharashtra government has decided a better option would be to give subsidies or grants to farmers for installing infra facilities at their farms to boost efficiency by easing input costs. “We are currently working on a policy whereby it would give grants or subsidies to farmers for say laying a network of pipelines for...