-Deccan Herald Poor monsoon forcing govt to intensify implementation Notwithstanding the scathing attack on UPA’s schemes, the Modi government would fall back on the previous regime’s flagship programme to rescue the rural economy from second consecutive deficient monsoon. The government would intensify implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in drought hit areas to stop the slide in rural incomes. Officials revealed that the main thrust in MGNREGA implementation in drought affected...

-CivilSocietyOnline.com Dehradun: Maletha village in Tehri Garhwal is very angry. Men, women and children sit on the road in dharna, demanding that a stone crushing company grandly called Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram be evicted from their village. The villagers’ problems began in February 2014 when two stone crushers arrived in Maletha with their machines. Their operations created an ear-splitting noise and belched clouds of dust that settled on crops and orchards. In August, another...

-The Hindu The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employee Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) has generated more rural employment than any other government scheme or private initiative in the history of independent India. At the same time, it has also generated a great deal of controversy over its merits and demerits. It would be fair to say that the policy establishment in the country right now is not favourably disposed towards the MGNREGA, with the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government has granted the military permission to test missiles targeting four ecologically fragile islands in the Andaman and Nicobar group in the Bay of Bengal, junking a UPA policy derisively known as "birds-over-bombs". The islands are uninhabited or largely uninhabited for most of the year, a source in the defence ministry claimed. Environmental organisations such as the Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore, claim the islands are home...

-The Economic Times The elders of Pimparkhed in the punishingly dry Marathwada region of Maharashtra remember the severe drought of 1972; it was then that the village had seen water Conservation work of some significance being undertaken. Over four decades later nothing has changed; this village of 1,000 residents continue to rely on tankers for its water needs. And Marathwada has turned into an epicentre of farmer suicides in the country;...