-The Hindustan Times India has driven the truck of development - loaded with tar, bricks, glass, concrete...the works - right through its most treasured and fragile green spaces in the last decade. While major cities like Delhi and Mumbai sacrificed green cover for real estate, the country's finest wildlife corridors have been ceded to indiscriminate industrialisation. In the absence of a clear policy to balance development and environment, the Aravallis in Gurgaon,...

-The Indian Express The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) promises 100 days of work to every rural household annually. The government on Friday increased the number of workdays under its flagship rural jobs guarantee scheme for tribal households to 150, but official data show that no more than 11 per cent of Scheduled Tribe households have been able to complete even the promised 100 days of annual employment...

-The Hindu     Some changes were ordered on the direct instructions of the Prime Minister The Prime Minister's office has repeatedly ordered and orchestrated dilution of environment and forest clearances in order to fast-pace industrial projects, documents with The Hindu show. In a series of orders and missives sent to the Union Environment and Forests Ministry over 2012-2013, the PMO instructed that regulations and norms had to be diluted or done away with. These...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Keeping an eye on the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the UPA government is considering to raise the workdays under its ambitious rural employment guarantee programme- MNREGA- from 100 to 150 days per year for forest dwellers and tribals. The Union Cabinet on Friday will consider the proposal for additional 50 days of employment to beneficiaries who have been granted land titles under The Scheduled Tribes and...

-The Hindu Increased rebel activity made it impossible for anyone to commute outside Jagargunda unless they left permanently, as the original inhabitants and the new entrants were marked as Salwa Judum supporters, and overtly boycotted by the Maoist-controlled villages surrounding the enclave. In Jagargunda, a large village in south Chhattisgarh, the villagers have been waiting for their winter rations for more than two months. Ordinarily, this would not be news but Jagargunda...