-The Hindu Navamy Sudhish reports on the disastrous impact of extreme climate events, rising fuel prices, destructive fishing practices, and overexploitation on livelihoods and biodiversity As dawn breaks, Vitalis slowly glides into undulating waves below an azure sky. With a sparse crew of six, she bobs towards the fishing ground some 10 nautical miles off the shore. The boat returns after five hours, its hold nearly empty. A pall of gloom settles...

-Article-14.com In driving out ‘illegal encroachers’ from farms in an area smaller than Assam’s capital for an agriculture project that does not interest native Assamese, the Bharatiya Janata Party government is dispossessing productive Bengali Muslim farmers, many of whom say they bought land from locals and have been paying land taxes, some for up to 70 years. Darrang, Assam: On the day Moinul Haque, 28, was shot in the abdomen and killed...

-The Hindu Floods often wash away rich, weathered soil. Rehabilitation programmes must consider this loss As the rains abate in Kerala and parts of Kodagu district in Karnataka, the loss of lives and the devastation of infrastructure and crops is apparent. However, as rebuilding is planned, what is often ignored is the soil that has been washed away. While roads and houses will be rebuilt, and crop losses compensated partially through insurance,...

-The Hindu The court-ordered clean-up in the textile town has managed to mitigate ill-effects of industrial pollution to a large extent. A similar remediation effort, involving the government and stakeholders, is needed in other parts of Tamil Nadu, where groundwater has been so contaminated that farming is not possible anymore On a sunny June morning, two men are spotted fishing close to the Orathupalayam dam in Erode district. A rather ordinary act in...

-The Business Standard Agrarian crisis in the state appears as much a failure of planning as the result of a shortage of rain On a dry and cloudless day this month, Balbir Krishna Ingde sat by the Ujjani Dam in the Krishna basin, one of Maharashtra's largest irrigation projects, and confronted the problem of scarcity amid presumed abundance. "The water is filling up the reservoir. If only they could release it into the...