-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party is inking its agriculture policy to connect with rural voters and expand its support base. Apart from farm production, the policy will focus on ensuring income security for farmers through a series of measures including a farmers' income commission, increasing access to insurance and credit facilities for tenant farmers and improving rural infrastructure. Recent data from the National Crime Records Bureau show...

-The Hindu With the era of cheap, bountiful water having been replaced by increasing supply-and-quality constraints, many international investors are beginning to view water as the new oil There is a popular, tongue-in-cheek saying in America - attributed to the writer Mark Twain, who lived through the early phase of the California Water Wars - that "whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over." It highlights the consequences, even if...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Backed by villagers and displaced people from different states, members of 200 NGOs from across the country on Monday slammed environment and forests minister M Veerappa Moily for ignoring environment and social concerns while granting speedy clearances to mining and infrastructure projects. Alleging that recent clearances pointed to "high corruption", the groups wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. They also demanded immediate rollback of the...

-Grain.org "We take care of the cow and the cow takes care of us," says Marayal, a farmer in Thalavady, Tamil Nadu. Her two cows produce 6 to 10 litres of milk a day, which she sells for 30-40 cents per litre. Across India, there are millions of backyard dairy farmers like Marayal. Each owning just one or two cows, these farmers supply millions more families and hundreds of thousands of informal...

-Deccan Herald In the past seven years around 3.2 crore farmers have abandoned farming and taken up menial jobs in the cities. At a time when change is the buzzword on the political landscape, when cities are changing, and the villages are no longer what they used to be; when incomes are rising for an educated few, and when the bottom of the pyramid - those below the poverty line -- are...