-ThePrint.in Attention deficit of the public, policy dyslexia and lack of political will lie at the roots of the recurring tragedy of flooding in Assam and Bihar. It’s an annual affair. Every year the floods arrive, bring devastation. ‘Reliefs’ arrive, bring consolation. Nothing changes. Water recedes. Drowned for months, the land emerges, drained of life. Hordes of living skeletons teeter on this dead land to build a life again.” It could be this...

-Down to Earth DTE visited village Dhamna in Uttar Pradesh’s Jalaun district to see how life in rural India is being sustained by the biggest employment guarantee scheme in the world People don’t eat paani poori during a pandemic. Out-of-business garment shops don’t employ tailors or hire security guards. It’s been five months since the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the subsequent countrywide lockdown stripped migrant labourers of their livelihood, leading to...

-The Tribune Farmer producer organisations (FPOs) attempt to address problems faced by small and marginal farmers, such as dwindling income, rising input costs and decreasing landholding Perturbed about his dwindling farm income, Kamalvir Singh, a marginal farmer from the nondescript village of Sirkapra in Patiala district, registered Nojvan Farmer Producer Company Limited in 2017. The idea was to assist small and marginal farmers and raise their income by involving them in an...

-Down to Earth Their ancestors were brought in as workers nearly a century ago by the former princely state Descendants of Munda and Santhal tribals, brought to Dhenkanal district in Odisha from Jharkhand nearly a century ago by the then princely state to work in its forests, have finally been given land rights under the Forest Rights Act, 2006. The Odisha government issued a notification on July 10, 2020, for the conversion of...

Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...