-Groundxero.in India’s forests are officially on sale. Forests, which are ecological and cultural constructs intrinsically linked with human communities that have been living in and using those for ages, have turned into mere repositories of ‘products’ such as timber and ‘ecosystem services’ that could be quantified, valued, priced and exchanged—or so the Draft National Forest Policy prepared by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change(MoEF & CC) would have us...

-The Hindu Asks party MPs to spend a night each in villages where SC/STs make up majority Four days after the Union government filed a review petition in the Supreme Court on its orders concerning the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday asked BJP MPs to reach out to villages where 50% or more of the population belonged to these communities. He was...

-TheWire.in Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won’t materialize. On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India – specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Central Vigilance Commissioner K V Chowdary on Tuesday said the Reserve Bank of India had apparently not conducted an audit during the period of time when a Rs 13,000-crore scam hit the Punjab National Bank. Chowdary Stressed the need to put into place a more robust auditing system. "They did not do this (an audit)," the head of the probity watchdog said. The CVC exercises superintendence over the CBI which...

-The Indian Express Schemes to ensure that farmers get fair returns will come a croppper unless trade and tariffs are synced with minimum support prices. With farm prices of several commodities falling way below their minimum support prices (MSPs) in 2016-17 and 2017-18, farmers have been under increasing Stress. The Centre and several state governments are searching for ways and means to support farmers. In his recent address (Mann ki Baat), the...