-The Times of India Ahmedabad: Salt pan workers, fishing community and maldharis in the Little Rann of Kutch (LRK) should be given their respective rights - salt making, fishing and pastoral land grazing. When denied these rights, locals illegally make salt and graze cattle in the forest area, leading to hassles with the forest department, a study commissioned by the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has found. During the 2012...

-The Indian Express The suffering of millions does not create public outrage, much less government accountability. The people of India’s villages carry collective memories of centuries of calamitous losses of sometimes millions of lives in famines. Famines have been pushed into history, unarguably one of free India’s greatest accomplishments. But the same can’t be said about droughts, which continue to extract an enormous toll on human suffering. At least a third of the...

-TheWire.in According to the central government’s statement to the Supreme Court last week, a third of the India’s districts are currently facing a severe drought. This means that at least 33 crore Indians are affected by ongoing the crisis. Expressing their deep concern on the issue and the impact it is having on rural populations of the country, and asking that the government take appropriate relief measures immediately, more than 150 academics...

-The Hindu Business Line Hyderabad: The three-day Kisan Swaraj Sammelan, which concluded here on Sunday, has called for an income guarantee scheme for farmers. The meeting, attended by farmers’ representatives and non-governmental organisations, from 25 States in the country, demanded that the Union government must bring out an Act to ensure minimum incomes for farmers. In a declaration announced at the end of the three day convention, the conference called for enactment...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court today said it was not possible on its part to order mining activities in the state's bauxite-rich Niyamgiri hills unless the gram sabhas and others likely to be affected by it were also heard in the matter. The apex court asked the Odisha Mining Corporation, which had sought fresh gram sabhas to consider the contentious Niyamgiri mining issue, to make the 14 gram sabhas, which...