While outlining strategies to increase availability of pulses at affordable prices, it is argued that increasing domestic production of pulses is the only option. Access to one or two protective irrigation sources during the growing season can lead to sizeable increases in pulse production. The har khet ko paani initiative should give priority to pulse-producing areas. The minimum support price, without procurement, helps traders more than farmers because it acts as a focal point for tacit collusion among traders.

India has far higher open defecation rates than other developing regions where people are poorer, literacy rates are lower, and water is relatively more scarce. In practice, government programmes in rural India have paid little attention in understanding why so many rural Indians defecate in the open rather than use affordable pit latrines. Drawing on new data, a study points out that widespread open defecation in rural India is on account of beliefs, values, and norms about purity, pollution, caste, and untouchability that cause people to reject affordable latrines.

Farmers in Maharashtra’s Nashik district – where one in every four tomatoes in India comes from – are destroying standing crops on a scale never seen before, following persistent rock-bottom prices since the November 8 demonetisation.

An ethnographic survey on the island of Satjelia in the Sundarbans shows how exclusionary conservation practices are intensifying the vulnerabilities of the local population. An inclusive conservation policy would privilege both biodiversity and people’s livelihoods.

Changes in temperature and rainfall patterns have introduced numerous problems across India, particularly among the poor and those heavily dependent on agriculture and forest for livelihood. This article examines the perception of the Maltos, a tribal community living in Sahibganj district, Jharkhand, about climate change, its impacts, and the coping mechanisms it has adopted.

Welcoming the debate on the assumptions underpinning water resource monitoring in India triggered by the Mihir Shah Committee report, the authors suggest that the proposed National Water Commission should focus on providing integrated data and science to help water managers and policymakers, avoiding getting directly involved in planning or regulation.

This critique assesses if the National Water Framework Bill 2016 and the Mihir Shah Committee report are truly interdisciplinary and based on the principles of integrated water systems governance. The question still remains whether the recommendations are enough to bridge existing gaps and address future challenges in water governance.

The Aadhaar-linked Direct Benefit Transfer scheme for reducing leakages in Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) subsidies has been widely advertised as a phenomenal success and has been used to promote Aadhaar and DBT in other spheres by prominent government officials. However, an analyses of various studies and data shows that the government’s tall claims of savings cannot be confirmed and leaves much to be questioned.

Much has been said and written about sharing of river waters between Punjab and Haryana from time to time since the reorganisation of the state of Punjab in 1966. Various agreements, accords, tribunals, commissions and water sharing formulas have been worked out time to time, but the problem still remains unsolved.

A public hearing is the only medium in the environmental clearance process through which people can interact directly with government officials and the project proponents regarding project-related concerns. The relevance of public hearings—underlining principles of “democratic participatory governance,” “sustainable development” and “natural justice” for people—can never be undermined.