News and Articles

The smallholder's dilemma
The economic unviability of smallholder agriculture and the consequent agrarian distress Posted on 11 Oct, 2021 09:20 PM

Roughly 85 percent of the farm households in India are small or marginal farmers, that is, they have less than 2 hectares of land, with 70 percent having less than 1 hectare of land. The average landholding is only 0.5 hectares per household (NSO, 2021).

Smallholder farmers are pivotal to transforming the food systems (Image: Mahila Jagat Lihaaz Samiti)
India needs a comprehensive emissions database
India needs an official national emissions inventory for pollutants, as existing ones show 37% variation Posted on 10 Oct, 2021 01:35 PM

India needs to develop and maintain a comprehensive inventory of baseline emissions to ascertain whether its policy and technological interventions are able to reduce air pollution, according to an independent 

Database needed to assess emissions from industries, power plants, road transport, domestic sources, and agricultural waste burning (Image: Pxfuel)
Can weather index insurance be a win for all?
Insurance needs to be seen and understood from a resilience lens Posted on 08 Oct, 2021 03:25 PM

Developing countries are already enduring the worst of climate change.

Devastated onion farm during floods in Bihar, 2016. (Image: Dakshina Murthy/IWMI)
Over 500 million people in India exposed to sand and dust storms
Storms worsen air quality and degrade vast farmland areas, as per a new UN study that analyses the impact of sand and dust storms on health, clean energy, transport, glaciers, cities and agriculture in Asia and the Pacific. Posted on 08 Oct, 2021 02:25 PM

According to a new UN report, more than 500 million people in India are exposed to medium and high levels of poor air quality due to sand and dust storms.

Storms worsen air quality and degrade vast farmland areas, disrupt commercial flight services, lower the efficiency of solar power generation, and accelerate the melting of glaciers. (Image: ESCAP)
Jal Jeevan Mission App and Rashtriya Jal Jeevan Kosh launched
Policy matters this fortnight Posted on 06 Oct, 2021 11:10 PM

PM Modi launches the Jal Jeevan Mission app and Rashtriya Jal Jeevan Kosh 

An overhead tank in Tamil Nadu that supplies water to a village (Source: IWP Flickr photos)
300 organisations from across the globe call for no climate finance for hydropower
News this fortnight Posted on 06 Oct, 2021 10:06 PM

Hydropower is not fit for climate finance according to 300 organisations worldwide

Gambhir dam near Ujjain (Source: IWP Flickr photos)
Does a drop per crop help groundwater extraction to stop?
This World Bank study from Andhra Pradesh found that drip irrigation did not limit groundwater exploitation. Farmers who had saved water continued to draw groundwater and sell it to farmers who were water constrained. Posted on 04 Oct, 2021 11:19 PM

Groundwater irrigation covers more than half of the total irrigated area in India and is responsible for 70 percent of the agricultural production, making India one of the largest users of groundwater in the world.

India, hurtling towards a groundwater crisis

Groundwater depletion, a growing problem in India (Image Source: India Water Portal)
Understanding the thinking behind IEC in large programs
Lessons from the Swachh Bharat Mission experience Posted on 04 Oct, 2021 03:24 PM

Our governing ministries in the Centre and in States plan several programs every year for the overall betterment of lives and livelihoods of the masses, and many of them require people to under

Pop culture icons like Gabbar Singh are painted on the walls of a toilet complex in New Delhi (Image: Project Raahat, Enactus)
Background on the meteorological datasets
This data can be useful in various research areas. Posted on 01 Oct, 2021 10:04 AM

Data source

Community videos: By the community, for the community
Community videos as a tool to influence behaviour change and adoption in rural communities Posted on 01 Oct, 2021 07:55 AM

The Paudi Bhuyan tribe in Odisha are one of the most primitive and vulnerable communities in the count

Community videos are produced by farmers themselves and feature local participants and agents from the rural communities themselves (Image: Digital Green)
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