-Outlook A parliamentary committee has picked holes in the ambitious agriculture debt waiver and debt relief scheme of the UPA government saying it could not achieve its goals due to a variety of reasons including violation of guidelines and poor monitoring. Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in its draft report on the scheme said there was a "flagrant display of financial and administrative indiscipline by the Department of Financial Services (of the...

-Frontline The tussle within some Central government Ministries over proposed cuts in the budget for rural development schemes has affected a promise made to senior citizens. THEIR wizened faces said it all. Though there was disappointment, there was also a glimmer of hope that their trek to the national capital would not go in vain. For almost a month, senior citizens, most of them poor, had been pouring into New Delhi from...

-The Indian Express Kutch (Gujarat): Bhajan Singh, 62, remembers the time curious villagers turned up to see a borewell his father Gopal Singh had dug up. The year was 1969 and it was the first time Sumrasar village, near Bhuj in Kutch district, had had a borewell. Few had ever seen it work, as they depended entirely on rainwater for the barely one crop they harvested a year. Originally from Pakistan, Gopal...

-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...

-The Hindu Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala): The government is considering a proposal to exempt stamp duty on Agricultural loans issued by commercial banks. Finance Minister K.M. Mani told a meeting of the State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC) here on Monday that a decision on the issue would be taken soon after assessing the financial implications. Pointing to the substantial share of commercial banks in primary sector credit, the last meeting of the SLBC had...