-The Hindu Aim is to instil competition among States to improve performance: NITI Aayog Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu have been ranked highest in terms of being on track to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), according to a first-of-its-kind index released by NITI Aayog on Friday. The index comprises a composite score for each State and Union Territory based on their aggregate performance across 13 of the 17 SDGs....

-The Telegraph In the long term, the only real solution to rural distress is to shift labour to more productive segments of the economy It has turned into an open season for farm loan waivers. Less than a week after assuming office, Congress governments in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have announced the waiver of crop loans up to two lakh rupees per farmer. The Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, has thrown down...

-NDTV Of the 13,000 wells in Indian side of Punjab, 25 per cent of them had high levels of arsenic, the study highlighted. New Delhi: The Indus Basin region covering areas of Indian as well as Pakistan side of Punjab has "serious" levels of arsenic in groundwater, along with traces of fluoride and nitrate, raising a major public-health concern, a new study Tuesday said. Of the 13,000 wells in Indian side...

-Mongabay.com * Indian government enacted the Forest Rights Act in 2006 to correct the historic injustice done to tribal people and forest dwellers but the implementation of the landmark legislation has been far from satisfactory. * A recent study reveals a large variation in the outcomes of claims submitted under the FRA Act across states. It found that states with more forest cover have higher claim distribution rates, while states with presence...

-Livemint.com Taking a cue from election results, political parties may announce more farm loan waivers but this will do little to fix the persistent distress in rural households The drubbing of the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh has proved beyond doubt that all isn’t well in India’s hinterland. An analysis of the poll results in these three states show that the...