-Down to Earth Despite the rural hinterland being in the throes of agrarian distress, the incumbent coalition has won handsomely in these very areas The incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has beaten all odds to win the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Prominent among these odds was the agrarian crisis that rural India is currently in the throes of. Since 2014, the country has suffered two major droughts and 850-odd...

-Livemint.com * Voters posed trust in Modi’s leadership for his welfare schemes like Jan Dhan Yojana * The Modi govt took a few policy missteps but came back strongly with focus on social sector schemes Parkash, 30, a tractor driver from Banswara, one of the poorest regions of southern Rajasthan, is happy that his family has received cooking gas and electricity connections during the five-year tenure of the Narendra Modi Government. “Our name is...

-The Hindu Say policymakers induce farmers to adopt incongruent crop pattern, causing water crisis Pune: The water crisis in Maharashtra is a “policy-induced failure”, according to economists and water academics who have specifically warned of the ‘desertification’ of the parched Marathwada region in the near future. “It is the ecological illiteracy of policy-makers and the selfishness of the power elite in inducing farmers across Marathwada to adopt a crop pattern that is not...

-Hindustan Times Barmer district collector Himanshu Gupta said traditional water bodies will be revived under MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act). Barmer: The Rajasthan Government plans to revive traditional water bodies to fight drinking water crisis in drought-affected areas, officials said. In the absence of adequate monsoon rain, people have been depending on traditional water bodies in remote desert areas of western Rajasthan. Barmer district collector Himanshu Gupta said traditional water...

  The Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation (MoWR, RD & GR) in its latest report has identified arsenic hotspots across the country, most notably in the states of Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Please consult chart-3 to get an idea about the geographical spread of arsenic hotspots in India. On the basis of arsenic concentration in the range 0.01-0.05 mg per litre...