-The Hindu Business Line Nine years after a landmark law empowering local communities, thousands of forest villages across India struggle to regain their traditional rights over resources and livelihoods Sundar Singh Rabha always carries a certain file folder. He holds it against himself in a hot tin car as it jangles along forest roads towards village Shalkumar, in a northern corner of West Bengal. His phone rings without respite. Every few minutes,...

-Livemint.com/ Bloomberg To join the global middle class, India must do much better Max Roser is at it again. The Oxford professor and master of economic data visualization has a new set of maps and charts showing how global income and inequality have changed during the last couple of centuries. The upshot is that while the world has gotten steadily richer that entire time, something very special and very good has...

-The Hindu Business Line Policy interventions, skill development enhance opportunities for farmers Agriculture, the largest livelihood generating activity, is fast transforming itself from a supply-driven to a demand-demand scenario. The discerning consumer (urban, rural and global) is increasingly demanding better quality, multiple choices, food safety and convenience. Diversification is the key to convene these changing demand patterns with supply, and more importantly, to act as an overall risk mitigant for the producer himself....

-Frontline India’s forest cover has been steadily growing in recent years, with a steep rise in the extent of very dense forests, but the loss of over 20,000 sq km of moderately dense forests is a cause for concern. India’s forest cover has increased by 5,871 square kilometres from the government’s 2011 assessment to 6,97,898 sq km or 69.79 million hectares, according to the Indian State of Forest Report 2013 released...

-Hindustan Times India’s back-to-back drought is likely to end in winter with the weather department predicting higher-than-normal rainfall between October and December in the southern part of the country and normal rains in the rest, boosting prospects of the winter harvest. The rabi, or winter-sown, season is vital since it accounts for nearly half the country’s total food output. The forecast eases worries about water shortages in the nation’s 89 nationally important...