-The Business Standard Against nodal ministry's protest, under PMO guidance, MoEF prepares to largely remove need for gram sabha agreement to use or give away forest land The central government is set to dilute the rights of tribals and other forest-dwelling communities, doing away with the present legal need for their consent while handing over their forest land to industry in large parts of the country. Business Standard has reviewed documents that detail...

-The Times of India NAGPUR (Maharashtra): Though untimely, delayed, erratic, insufficient or excess rains have been ruining crops in the region for the last few years, farmers claim this year will see the worst crop failures in recent times. All three major Vidarbha crops, cotton, soyabean and orange, have suffered huge losses due to the truant rains. Generally, at least one crop survives nature's vagaries so farmers get some income. But this...

-The Hindustan Times To kick-start stalled development projects and remove investment bottlenecks, the government is expected to make changes to the land acquisition act during the winter session that opens on November 24. Dilution of the consent clause, restricting social impact assessment to large projects and giving states the powers to define "emergency" under "urgency clause" for acquiring land are some of the major amendments -- demanded by various states -- that...

-Press Information Bureau/ Ministry of Tribal Affairs Centre has launched Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana (VKY) for welfare of Tribals. Launching the scheme on the occasion of the meeting of the Tribal Welfare Ministers of States/UTs here today the Union Tribal Welfare Minister Shri Jual Oram said that the scheme been launched on pilot basis in one block each of the States of AP, MP, HP, Telangana, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and...

-The Hindu Taking note of the practices being followed by Krishnaveni, many have started cultivating multiple crops Medak District (Andhra Pradesh): B. Krishnaveni is in her early 50s. She is a resourceful farmer who never lets her two-acre land go vacant. Besides practising ‘Srivari' cultivation, she also grows vegetables. Not only that, she has stopped using ‘masala' (fertilizers) since the past few years and adopted the non-pesticide management (NPM) practice. "We came to...