Model community forestry initiatives in Orissa are defying Forest Department efforts to control and exploit the region’s forests. ‘Heaven is a forest of miles and miles of Mohua trees / And hell is a forest of miles and miles of Mohua trees with a forest guard in it!’ Thus goes a song of the Muria Adivasis in the forests of Bastar in central India. Encapsulated in this simple expression, however, is...

-Inclusion.in There is good news. And there’s bad news. The good news first. There’s been a bumper wheat crop and the granaries are overflowing. And the bad news? Where do we begin? A lot of that grain will rot. Millions will still remain hungry. Heavily in debt and distressed, farmers are committing suicide. Food prices are soaring. There’s more… Farmers don’t have money. Their land is too small and isn’t yielding much. Fertilisers and...

-The Hindu Saving the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) — the centrepiece of UPA-I’s achievements in the social welfare sector — from its many critics in government and the media who view it as a drain on the exchequer will head the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC)’s agenda in the coming months. At a meeting of the reconstituted NAC on Friday, its members discussed the role a re-energised...

-The Telegraph Next time you take a 10-minute coffee break, spare a thought. By the time you come back refreshed, a mother would have died. India recorded 56,000 maternal deaths in 2010, according to a UN report, which makes it six every hour — or one every 10 minutes. The report, released in India on July 2, means that despite various schemes launched by the Centre and state governments, the number of deaths...

-The Indian Express   Time to take the bolder steps, bring FDI to small towns When the GDP falls below 7 per cent, we need to start worrying. When it is less than 6 per cent, we must treat it as a crisis situation. Growth models show that the robust investment rates already achieved, and twice the productivity growth achieved in the 1980s and ’90s, will get us 8 per cent growth. This...