-TheWire.in Chitrakoot (UP): In the drought-affected Basiniha village in Uttar Pradesh’s Chitrakoot district, the situation is so bad that the villagers survive on a single roti a day. Despite this, Munni Devi was not eager to take up employment at a NREGA work site when an offer was recently made. There is a simple reason for Munni Devi’s reluctance – she has not yet received wages for the nearly 20 days of...

-Hindustan Times In Bollywood romcoms, mustard fields glowing iridescent yellow are an oft-used backdrop for romantic songs. Remember the iconic 1995 hit, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge Mustard, as it were, is an onscreen metaphor for vigour and youthful passion. However, looked through a farm scientist’s lens, the traditional Indian mustard isn’t genetically very impressive. It is only half as robustly growing as its east European cousins. Low yields mean India has to...

-The Asian Age Is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) a “living monument” of the failure of the economic policies of the Indian National Congress which has ruled the country for all but roughly 14 years since August 1947? Or is it that the MGNREGA, a law enacted a decade ago which seeks to implement the world’s biggest and most ambitious job creating scheme, one of the few...

-Hindustan Times Indore (Madhya Pradesh): The contrast could not have been starker. At Hanuwantiya village of Khandwa district, the Madhya Pradesh government is celebrating Jal Mahotsav and developing the biggest water sports destination of the country in the backwaters of Indira Sagar dam. And barely 35-40 km away, farmers in several villages are facing a famine-like situation and staring at crop failure. Most of the farmland in the area has turned brown...

-Down to Earth Several initiatives are demonstrating how the informal e-waste recycling sector can be formalised Savita Devi (name changed), a municipal solid waste worker in Ahmedabad city, used to earn Rs 1,500 per month. When she joined an initiative of GIZ India in 2012, where she was trained to collect e-waste, her income rose to Rs 2,500 per month. “We are now able to hire private tutors to educate our children,”...