-Down to Earth No funds released under Jal Shakti Abhiyan, MGNREGS works incomplete: District officials Over 400 kilometres from Uttar Pradesh’s Mahoba district — where construction of bunds under Jal Shakti Abhiyan helped revive groundwater — is another that paints an opposite picture. Madhya Pradesh’s Rajgarh district ranked 205 among the 255 water-stressed districts in terms of successful water intervention schemes under Jal Shakti Abhiyan (JSA) and community participation. Rajgarh district collector Mrinal Meena...

-The Indian Express The Indian poultry industry is going through its worst crisis, this time from unsubstantiated fears linking the spread of COVID-19 to chicken consumption. Urja Foods and Agro’s hatchery unit spread over 10 acres in Gawadewadi village of Pune district’s Ambegaon taluka wears a deserted look. Not surprising at all, when its production of day-old chicks was 5.4 lakh in February but is unlikely to cross 2 lakh this month....

-Hindustan Times They are a valuable tool for improved discoms. But they can’t solve what are fundamentally governance failures Much has changed in the electricity sector in the last few years. Electricity generation capacity is now surplus after years of deficits, and the price of solar power has fallen by 70%. But one thing that has barely changed is the performance of the electricity distribution companies (discoms), which continue to bleed money....

-The Hindu Among this year’s Padma Shri awardees are a father and daughter who turned a barren wasteland into a riot of trees and crops Furrowed with deep gullies, its topsoil all but gone, this degraded patch of land near Odagaon in Odisha’s Nayagarh district was once a dense forest. Whenever nature tried to reclaim it, the little shoots would be nibbled away by goats and sheep. The villagers who owned the...

-The Indian Express Some fear such a census will “further marginalise” the descendants of Bengali-speaking migrants in Assam Guwahati: Assam’s Welfare of Minorities Minister Ranjit Dutta has confirmed the state’s plans to implement a census to identify Assam’s ‘khilonjiya’, or indigenous Muslim population, this year. On Tuesday, Dutta will meet with various representatives of the indigenous Assamese Muslim community to seek their “suggestions” in finalising the framework of the census. “A sum of...