-The Indian Express Mumbai: Despite MGNREGA’s rich possibilities, Kumar notes that the Maharashtra government has slashed allocations under it to Rs 800 crore in 2014-15. Even as it stares at unprecedented crop loss from back-to-back droughts followed by untimely rains/hailstorms, Maharashtra has seemingly given the short shrift to MGNREGA, which could have gone some way in mitigating the current crisis. And significantly, its potential has been least leveraged in Vidarbha, the region...
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Check dam in a day using plastic sheets -Shree Padre
-CivilSocietyOnline.com Kasargod: In 2000, Pidamale Govinda Bhat, 63, a middle-class areca nut farmer, rigged up an experimental check dam with sand and plastic sheets. For decades, his family had been constructing a temporary check dam across the Okkethoor river with stones and soil to irrigate their farm. “The government constructed a vented dam for us in place of our temporary check dam,” recalls Bhat. “But the sarkari dam leaked and leaked. By...
More »Watch What Happens When Tribal Women Manage India’s Forests -Manipadma Jena
-IPS News NAYAGARH (IPS): Kama Pradhan, a 35-year-old tribal woman, her eyes intent on the glowing screen of a hand-held GPS device, moves quickly between the trees. Ahead of her, a group of men hastens to clear away the brambles from stone pillars that stand at scattered intervals throughout this dense forest in the Nayagarh district of India’s eastern Odisha state. The heavy stone markers, laid down by the British 150 years...
More »Govt's indiscriminate crackdown on NGOs will affect the 'marginalised' -Samar Halarnkar
-Hindustan Times They are called cafeteria sessions. At lunch time, Greenpeace fund-raisers wander among hundreds, sometimes thousands, of young men and women packing the cafeterias of Indian companies. It’s not a good idea to name these companies. Greenpeace’s activities include forest preservation, renewable-energy promotion and fighting on behalf of local communities. These appear to be popular causes among young professionals. Donations of Rs 300 to Rs 500 constitute about 80% of...
More »If you want to help the farmer -Vani S Kulkarni, Katsushi S Imai and Raghav Gaiha
-The Indian Express As the toll of human misery and suicide mounts, official estimates of farm losses due to unseasonal rains and hailstorms in March remain controversial, with hasty downward revision. Since these estimates are largely notional, without validation from field visits, such revision smacks of deliberate fiddling. On March 24, the agriculture ministry reported that crops on 18 million hectares — about 30 per cent of the rabi crops —...
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