-Livemint.com/ AP Hundreds of millions of people in at least 13 states are reeling from severe drought, a situation that is expected to worsen in the coming months Shahapur: Shantabai Babulkar’s day begins before dawn with a 5 kilometer trek across barren fields and dusty scrubland to fetch water from a distant well for her family. The two metal pots of muddy water that Babulkar, 58, balances on her head and a...
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Job scheme in decline -Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
-Frontline.in The increase in the budgetary allocation for the MGNREGA is only marginal. The scheme helped lower the poverty level by 32 per cent between 2004-05 and 2011-12, but government support for it has been declining steadily. In the beginning, economists belonging to the Right and the Left were of the view that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) was merely a populist measure. While the former believed...
More »Yogendra Yadav, leader of Swaraj Abhiyan, interviewed by Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
-Frontline Former psephologist Yogendra Yadav, now a member of the political collective Swaraj Abhiyan, recently toured India’s drought-affected districts. He called it a Samvedna Yatra. During the tour, he took note of the agony in rural areas affected by what he calls “one of the worst droughts in independent India” The drought, according to him, has left farmers and the larger rural community in extreme distress, leading to damaging changes in...
More »Tribal affairs ministry gives in to pressure, ‘okays’ Village Forest Rules -Shruti Agarwal
-Down to Earth These rules, if implemented, will lead to dilution of the Forest Rights Act The campaign for rights under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, received yet another setback in November 2015, according to government orders which recently became available in the public domain. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA), the nodal agency for the implementation of the Act, issued a memorandum endorsing the Village Forest Rules (VFR) notified...
More »Bundelkhand’s drought-ravaged land leading to farmer suicides -Ranjan and Anupam Pateriya
-Hindustan Times Bhopal/Sagar: When 39-year-old Ram Dwivedi shot himself with a rifle in Uttar Pradesh’s water-starved Banda district a few months ago, it came as a shock even to local residents in the drought-ravaged Bundelkhand region. In the past few years, most people who committed suicide in the area were either tenants or small-time farmers. But despite having 20 acres of land, Dwivedi couldn’t generate enough income to sustain his six-member family. Hit...
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