-Livemint.com The National Mission for Clean Ganga has decided to conduct a study on ‘Hilsa’ fish in the Ganga River for its better conservation and management New Delhi: Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has brought 20 kg of ‘Hilsa’ fish as gift for President Pranab Mukherjee during her ongoing India visit but the species has seen a consistent decline in the country. Thus for its better conservation and management, the National Mission for...

-Livemint.com The International Water Day serves as an annual reminder of the mess in management of water resources In an intriguing order on 20 March, the Uttarakhand High Court has recognized the Rivers Ganges and Yamuna as a living entity, which means that anybody found polluting the River would be seen as harming a human being. It remains to be seen what impact the order has but the order does reflect a...

-The Hindu Business Line Thiruvananthapuram: J Cherian, an MBA in biotech from Scotland, who took to farming on his ancestral property in central Kerala, watches in despair as a merciless March sun beats down on his young plants. “This is unlike anything that I've seen in my eight years in the fields,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders. The administration seemed to concur, with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan declaring that artificial...

-The Hindu Business Line State govt package is inadequate, unfair and not quick enough, says farm sector Chennai: “When there is no water to drink, what can we say about irrigation?” asked K Venkatesan, a farmer near Vridhachalam. Whether canal dependent or bore well irrigated, all crops have withered, he said. Insurance compensation and the disbursement of the State government’s relief package have to be expedited, said farmers’ representatives. Farmers have to be fully...

-The Hindu Indiscriminate digging of farm ponds has accelerated groundwater extraction The Maharashtra government’s flagship Jalyukt Shivar Yojana has been touted as a drought-proofing scheme, but a field study conducted by South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) gives a different picture. The organisation carried out the study at Hiwargaon-Pawasa, a backwater village with a population of 1,500, in Ahmadnagar district’s Sangamner Taluk. The research presents a microcosmic example of how...