-The Times of India LUCKNOW: Union minister for rural development Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday shot off another letter to the Akhilesh Yadav government, accusing it of having failed to spend money given under the central schemes. This is Jairam's sixth dispatch to the SP government since it came to power in March, 2012. The letter to the chief minister focuses on the implementation of the Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP), a centrally-funded...

-World Resources Institute India struggles with water scarcity, a problem that poses especially huge implications for the country's food security and rural livelihoods. The country has long-battled its scarcity issues through Watershed Development, a participatory approach to improve water management through afforestation and reforestation, sustainable land management, soil and water conservation, water-harvesting infrastructure, and social interventions. But while watershed development has been employed in communities throughout India, its potential long-term costs...

-Down to Earth Thousands of people working under NREGS bring a 38 km stream back from the dead in Uttar Pradesh Thirty nine-year-old Ram Ishwar gave up farming to pull a rickshaw outside the railway station in Uttar Pradesh's Fatehpur town. He says scarcity of water and a resultant increase in the cost of irrigation rendered farming unprofitable. Wheat production from his 0.4 hectare (ha) farmland shrank from one tonne to half...

-The Hindu     They used a legal loophole to violate environmental norms Ninety-four of the 192 iron ore mining leases in Odisha do not have the mandatory environmental clearances. And of the 96 that did have them, 75 have mined far beyond their permitted levels over the past several years, the Justice M.B. Shah Commission report on illegal iron and manganese ore mining has said. The Hindu has accessed parts of the report,...

-Down to Earth CAG audit may be sought if states fail to disclose correct information, says secretary for drinking water and sanitation The secretary of Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS) has set up a high-level committee to look into the huge discrepancy between its data on toilets built under its sanitation programme and what exists on ground. The discrepancy came to light following the 2011 Census findings that...