-The Hindu Mihir Shah on the importance of an integrated policy for groundwater and surface water Mihir Shah, water policy expert, member of the erstwhile Planning Commission and in recent months head of several committees tasked with reforming India’s water laws, says existing institutions are inadequate to address our water needs. Which is why, he says in an e-mail interview, India needs an overarching water commission. Excerpts: * The proposed National Water Commission...

Rising prices of dal: How to deal with it? The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. In India, however, ordinary citizens are under enormous duress due to the skyrocketing prices of dal/ lentils since the last one year. The website of Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that dal prices varied across places. For example, the...

-The Hindu Kerala today is not generating enough jobs to meet the expectations of educated Keralites entering the labour market. Changing this is vital and doable Kerala’s development model is in focus yet again as the newly elected Left Democratic Front government is in the process of evolving a vision for the State’s economy. On the one hand, Kerala has made spectacular achievements in land reforms, education, and health since its formation. Amartya...

-Earth Island Journal It’s too early to hail Sikkim’s transition to chemicals-free agriculture an outright success, say observers Sikkim, the picturesque northeastern Indian state in the eastern Himalayas, announced in January that it had transitioned completely to organic agriculture — the first state in the South Asian nation to do so. The process of shifting to organic agriculture was initiated by the state government 13 years ago when it launched the Sikkim Organic...

-The Indian Express A senior state official said that the objective would be on environmental training focused on protecting water resources, preventing deforestation, safer pesticide use, and mitigating impacts of extreme climatic condition on farm produce Mumbai: After facing three severe drought spell in four years, Maharashtra has decided to embrace climate-smart agriculture. On August 10, the state cabinet gave its nod for an ambitious project of training farmers in 4,900 villages...