The Vidarbha region in Maharashtra since long been facing an acute agrarian crisis, causing distress to a large part of the local population whose primary occupation is agriculture.

Over the last decade, poverty has declined substantially in India, driven largely by the country’s more recent rapid economic growth. Sadly, however, improvements in the nutritional status, particularly of children, have not kept pace.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) helped lower poverty by 32 per cent between 2004-05 and 2011-12, lifting almost 14 million in this regard, says a recent survey by the National Council for Applied Economic Research and the University of Maryland.

Groundwater depletion has become an increasingly important policy concern in many countries around the world especially so in India, which is the largest user of groundwater for irrigation. Groundwater is contended to have ushered green revolution in the country. However, a downside to this pattern of development is that it is not sustainable.

The social cost benefit analysis approach allows an assessment of the impact of a project on the national economy unlike financial analysis, which looks at the impact of the project on the finances of the investors. For a project to be economically viable, it must be financially sustainable, apart from being economically efficient.