-Down to Earth In the 1990s, non-profits and farmers themselves built check dams; today, the government does it, without proper research or site selection Fifty-four-year old Dineshbhai Babariya has just harvested a 20 quintal cotton crop, his second harvest in the last one year in his four bigha (1.6 acre) farm in the Jasapar village of Gujarat’s Saurashtra region. August 2018 was the last time the village in Rajkot district received around 228...
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Number crunching helps farmers manage water -Manu Moudgil
-IndiaWaterPortal.org Calculating water availability and crop budgeting can prevent over-extraction of groundwater and mounting farm debt. At 42 years, Bhagwat Ghagare seems young. But he is old enough to have seen his village prosper and decline many times. Farming had traditionally been small and distress migration rampant at Kumbharwadi in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. Between 1998 and 2002, a non-profit organisation, Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR), initiated a work related to rainwater harvesting...
More »Only 26% of rural toilets use twin-leach pits, finds survey -Varun B Krishnan & Priscilla Jebaraj
-The Hindu Waste disposal from other toilets could turn into health and environmental nightmare New Delhi: Over the last year, a government advertisement featuring film actors Akshay Kumar and Bhumi Pednekar has been preaching the benefits of the “do gadde” or twin-pit latrines, which would create valuable farm manure from human excreta. “Shauchalaya ka ashirvad,” proclaims Mr. Kumar in the advertisement produced by the Centre’s flagship sanitation scheme Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. This month,...
More »Arvind Kejriwal flags off 200 sewer cleaning machines
-PTI The machines have been provided to skilled manual scavengers making them ‘sani-entrepreneurs’, officials said. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal flagged off a fleet of 200 sewer cleaning machines in New Delhi on Thursday. The machines have been provided to skilled manual scavengers making them ‘sani-entrepreneurs’, officials said. “It is a historic day for Delhi to start this initiative and ensuring safety and dignity of human life. These machines will put an end to...
More »Cane dues in Uttar Pradesh may cross Rs 10,000 crore -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express The only way to prevent a further piling-up of cane arrears would be via improved sugar realisations, according to a miller. Arrears in payments to cane farmers by sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh (UP) have almost touched Rs 8,500 crore and could cross the Rs 10,000-crore mark by March-end, just ahead of voting for the coming Lok Sabha elections. According to data compiled by the Cane Commissioner’s Office in...
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