-Down to Earth The new government has to focus on the rural population, their aspirations and the economy By this time most of us know Sunaina Rawat. Still a brief introduction: she is a 12-year-old girl from a village in Uttar Pradesh. When the news channel NDTV’s head Prannoy Roy interviewed her on life and aspirations while covering elections, she immediately became one of the most imposing symbol for the country’s rural...

-Newsclick.in Northern Maharashtra, which produces almost 60% of India’s total onion crop, has seen a steady fall in onion rates creating a crisis for the farmers in the drought affected state. Two months back, NewsClick reported the suicide of a 22-year-old boy whose onion crop had failed. This Akshay Tambe was from Bhoom tehsil of Marathwada, an area which is actually not known for onion cultivation. But the heart wrenching stories of...

-TheWire.in For many farmers, the compensation they received is substantially less than the premium they paid. Parbhani (Maharashtra): “If even one rupee owed to one farmer is not paid, then the government will pay that money and recover it from the (insurance) company,” said Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis while addressing an rally ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He was referring to the Prime Minister’s Crop Insurance Scheme (Pradhan Mantri...

-The Times of India AURANGABAD: A patchwork of brown fields is visible from the air as you fly into this drought-hit region in rural Maharashtra. But amid the dry land is a growing mosaic of blue and brown squares and rectangles. These are farm ponds: Large earthen structures that have spread across rural Maharashtra in the past five years, thanks to a raft of central and state subsidies. The ponds were conceived...

-Mongabay.com * The Marathwada region in Maharashtra is in the midst of another drought. While most of the area is dry, some villages practising watershed development are surprisingly green. * In the absence of political interventions some villages are going into self-help mode. Villagers allege vested interests in ‘man-made’ drought. * Lack of policy changes and political will have also been blamed for current situation. * Meena Menon travelled extensively through the drought-hit districts...