-Newsclick.in Rice meant for the poor will be sold at subsidised rates to privately-owned ethanol distilleries. The industries will be given cheap loans and exempted from Environmental Clearances. Is the Modi government subsidising the rich at the cost of the poor by diverting foodgrains meant for the most impoverished sections of the population to private industries for producing alcohol for India’s ethanol blended petrol programme? There’s more: For manufacturing ethanol, foodgrains will not...

-Scroll.in The result is a big mess, in the words of one official. In nine months since September, a file containing a proposal seeking environmental approval to upgrade a highway in Sikkim has travelled about 1,500 km from Shillong to Kolkata to Guwahati, before returning to rest in an office in Kolkata. Until last week, the file had not been examined, an official in the environment ministry said. The story of this file...

-Newslaundry.com The state’s River Training Policy appears designed to allow near unfettered mining of sand and boulders by private contractors, bypassing green clearance and scientific assessment. In November 2020, a few months before floods ravaged Uttarakhand, the deputy collector of Purnagiri in Tanakpur district announced an open auction of tenders to desilt the riverbed in Champawat’s villages. Tenders for government work usually seek the lowest bidder, the contractor willing to do the job...

-Down to Earth Bihar usually gets heavy rains in July and August; floods in June are an unusual occurrence, experts said Several villages have been flooded after 3-4 days of early monsoon rains in the catchment areas of the Gandak and Burhi Gandak rivers in Nepal and north Bihar. Affected districts include West Champaran, East Champaran, Gopalganj and Muzaffarpur. Other rivers including the Bagmati, Koshi, Kamla Balan, Bhuthi Balan and Ghaghara are also...

In his Mann ki Baat address to the nation on 30th May, 2021, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi appreciated the fact that the farmers received "more than the minimum support price (MSP) for mustard" pertaining to the rabi production. One can easily guess from this statement of the PM that the mustard growers in Haryana (and elsewhere) preferred to sell their produce to private traders in the open market instead...