-Livemint.com * The then TDP government had invited tenders for infrastructure development even before the World Bank loan details were finalized, said an official with the state government, requesting anonymity * According to the official, the team found numerous irregularities Hyderabad: Days after the World Bank (WB) announced backing out of Amaravati capital city project, by withdrawing its $300 million funding, officials from the Andhra Pradesh government said rampant corruption besides flouting of...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has directed the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to shut down polluting industries in “critically polluted” and “severely polluted” areas across the country within three months, saying that economic development cannot take place at the cost of public health. The directions, put up on the NGT website on Tuesday, were issued on July 10 on the basis of a study carried...

-National Herald Agriculture, food and trade policy expert Devinder Sharma writes: “My understanding is that only agriculture can reboot the economy, sustain millions of livelihoods, and reduce global warming.” At a time when Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz says that neo-liberalism is ‘dead and buried’, and the world as a result is increasingly grappling with the gigantic problems of rising unemployment, gnawing inequality and climatic change reaching a tripping point, agriculture alone has...

-The Hindu With growing environmental distress, policymakers cannot shy away from adopting best eco-management practices In a report last year, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) called the Chennai floods of 2015 a “man made disaster”, a pointer to how the encroachment of lakes and river floodplains has driven India’s sixth largest city to this ineluctable situation. The Chennai floods are a symbol of consistent human failings and poor urban...

-The Telegraph Who stole my river? In the past 100 years, nearly 700 rivers have died in the delta of the Ganges in Bengal Even as late as the 1920s, squabbling sisters in households across Bengal were rebuked thus — Gaang-e gaang-e dekha hoy, kintu bon-e bon-e dekha hoy na. Meaning, even rivers meet but not sisters — they are married off early and have to go separate ways. The subtext, therefore,...