-The Times of India HYDERABAD: The extent of arable land in Telangana has registered a decline due to growth in industry, construction of houses, urbanisation and Infrastructure development. This was revealed by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics of the government in its report on agricultural statistics for 2015-16. The report revealed that the land put to non-agricultural uses rose from 8.19 lakh hectares in 2008-09 to 8.92 lakh hectares in 2015-16. The...

-Hindustan Times Water management should be at the heart of all smart city planning. While there is a lot of emphasis on transportation and Infrastructure development, water management remains limited to treatment of waste water, quality monitoring, and smart metering in the government’s smart cities strategy. No clear plans have emerged on how smart cities are to be linked with their water catchments to ensure sustainable provision of water. More clarity is...

-The Indian Express For the poor, with little cash in the first place, digital promises to ‘swipe’ them out, before their marginalisation is even addressed. Demonetisation is, by its very nature, an autocratic, coercive step. The demonetisation of November 2016 has affected every single Indian. We are, as usual, persuaded to bear the pain and suffering, to “sacrifice” for the nation. The rhetoric continues but it now seems clear that the objective...

-Down to Earth Modi government’s attempt at rationalising prices of forest products is likely to hit Adivasi farmers the most At the time when there has been demand for increasing the minimum support prices for various agricultural products, the NDA government has gone ahead and slashed the prices of forest produce on which livelihoods of several forest-dwelling tribes depend. Stating the need to rationalise the minimum support price (MSP) as they...

-The Indian Express With optic fibre cables laid in over 65,000 gram panchayats, Centre’s BharatNet project seems on track to achieve its 1,00,000 target by March 2017. However, lack of active connectivity remains a concern. Ahmedabad/ Gandhinagar/ New Delhi: With less than 25 per cent of the 65,475 gram panchayats in the country with optic fibre connectivity having active internet under the BharatNet project, the success of Centre’s push for digital payments...