-The Week Vagaries of the weather are not the only reason for Marathwada's agrarian crisis Three widows, two daughters and an overwhelming sense of grief occupy the house of the Palwes in Kekat Jalgaon in Paithan, Aurangabad. The house lost all its men there were three in the past three years. The Palwe widows, Yashoda, Chandrabhaga and Lakshmibai, and Yashoda's two daughters, Suman, 8, and Sarita, 6, live in a hut without...

-Press Information Bureau/ Cabinet The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, today gave its approval to a comprehensive New Urea Policy 2015 for the next four financial years. The Policy has multiple objectives of maximizing indigenous urea production and promoting energy efficiency in urea units to reduce the subsidy burden on the Government. Savings in energy shall reduce the carbon-footprint and would thus be more environment friendly....

-Hindustan Times Sheopur: The tribals of 106 villages in Madhya Pradesh have either demolished government made toilets or are using them as storerooms, say government officials, admitting that one of the reasons behind this was faulty design. This happened just 450 kilometres from Bhopal in Sheopur district villages where the government had built about 13,000 roofless, waterless and three-walled structures’ in the name of toilets in 2008-09 under its rural sanitation scheme. Many...

-The Indian Express We need a contingency plan that combines real-time technology with robust insurance and easy credit. On April 22, 2015 the Indian Met Department (IMD) released its first forecast for the upcoming monsoon rains, saying it is likely to be below normal, at 93 per cent of the long period average (LPA). Only a week before that, on April 15, a private forecaster, Skymet, had predicted normal rains (102...

-Livemint.com Despite improvements over the past few years, accessing clean water is a big challenge in rural India Women in Indian villages have borne the brunt of water scarcity for a long time. Tales of young women missing out on school or college to fetch water for their families are common across the Indian countryside even today. But then there are extreme examples, such as the village of Denganmal, 150 kilometres...