-The Hindu The Western Ghats panel’s suggestions stressed the need to strengthen grass-roots governance In 2018, many people thought that the floods and landslides in Kerala that caused huge financial losses and manifold human tragedies marked a once-in-a-century calamity, and that normalcy will return soon and we can merrily return to business as usual. Further, the probability of two such back-to-back events was only 1 in 10,000. Hence, in 2019, a repeat...

-Hindustan Times The nature-development equilibrium is broken, leading to climate disasters. At least 100 people have died in floods in three states in peninsular India — Kerala, Karnataka, and Maharashtra — in August due to monsoon floods. There are several reasons, as reported in a series of articles in Hindustan Times, for the havoc and deaths, such as changes in land-use patterns, excessive quarrying and unscientific plantations (Kerala), poor management of dams...

-The Hindu Business Line Distracted by elections, the country’s alarming water crisis has been overlooked As India’s water crisis gets visibly worse with every passing summer, it is clear that the bureaucracy and policymakers are not working to find immediate and long-term solutions. This time, the apathy seems to have worsened due to the ongoing elections. In Maharashtra and Kerala, for instance, the administrations have taken refuge in the ‘model code of...

-The Telegraph Rahul cited Sreedhanya’s achievement in Wayanad as evidence that the job scheme was working and took a dig at Narendra Modi Kalpetta (Kerala): The first tribal woman from Kerala to qualify for the IAS told Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday that her parents were beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Sreedhanya Suresh said her parents had educated their two children with the money they earned from the rural...

-Newsclick.in In an interview, the ‘father’ of India’s Green Revolution, says while technology is necessary, policies on procurement and public distribution are far more important in making agriculture economically viable and sustainable in the country. No one has played a more instrumental role in India’s self-sufficiency in food production than Dr MS Swaminathan — world-renowned agricultural scientist, known as the ‘Father of Green Revolution in India’. After getting a PhD from Cambridge...