-Newsclick.in Of the 136 talukas in Maharashtra, which had demanded that they should be declared ‘drought-hit’, only three were “eligible” to be there in the category, as per 2016 manual. Though the India Meteorological Department (IMD) had declared a month ago that as many as 255 districts of the country have witnessed deficit rainfall of 20 to 59 per cent during the South-West monsoon, many of the states are yet to declare...

-The Hindu Mumbai among biggest laggards with 3.8% growth in collections against a target of 13.3% Mumbai: The Income Tax Department may miss the revenue collection target for this fiscal going by the numbers for the first two quarters. Out of 18 income tax regions in the country, only five — Delhi, Uttar Pradesh (E), Uttar Pradesh (W), Odisha and the North-East — have managed to achieve the revenue goals in the...

-The Hindu Hundreds of species of pollinators may be in dangerous decline Across India’s agrarian plains, plantations and orchards, millions of birds, bats and insects toil to pollinate crops. However, many of these thousands of species may be in dangerous decline. In 2015, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that pollinators lead to huge agricultural economic gains. The report estimated pollinator contribution in India to be $0.831-1.5 billion...

-The Hindu Natural recharge during monsoon may not help much if groundwater depletion becomes acute, as rainfall of past years controls current storage With 230 billion metre cube of groundwater drawn out each year for irrigating agriculture lands in India, many parts of the country are experiencing rapid depletion of groundwater. The total estimated groundwater depletion in India is in the range of 122–199 billion metre cube. The Indo-Gangetic Plain, northwestern, central and...

-The Hindu Country’s high population makes it vulnerable to an ecological crisis, says World Wide Fund for Nature India’s soil biodiversity is in grave peril, according to the Global Soil Biodiversity Atlas prepared by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The WWF’s ‘risk index’ for the globe — indicating threats from loss of above-ground diversity, pollution and nutrient over-loading, over-grazing, intensive agriculture, fire, soil erosion, desertification and climate change — shows India among...