After last year’s failed rainfall dried up most wells and the depeleting water table drove the hand pumps to a trickle, farmers in the nearly 200 villages in Mann and Khatav talukas in Satara are now struggling to save their cattle. While both farmers and their livestock await government relief with parched throats, help it seems is lost somewhere in the not-so-unusual ways of bureaucracy and procurement glitches by local officials.

If an ambitious state road development plan approved by the public works department is implemented, then by 2021, all the national highways passing through Maharashtra will be expressways with a minimum of four lanes, ring roads will be constructed for all districts and all tehsils will have bypass roads.

All eyes in the Nashik forest department are on the man-versus-beast conflict playing out in the district. The two recent attacks by leopards in the village of Shivare, near Niphad(about 35km from Nashik), just 25 days apart, have not come as a surprise to many.

In an effort to help the areas reeling under the drought along the Maharashtra and Karnataka border, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan (pictured right), on Monday, sought help from the neighbour state. “I have urged the government of Karnataka to release water from its dam to meet the water crisis in 44 villages along the Maharashtra border,” said Chavan. “The situation in Sangli and Satara districts is of serious concern. The administration has been directed to deploy additional tankers to meet the drinking water requirements there.”

Rising cases of circular trading of the Aussie bird in Tamil Nadu

Jalandhar: After the successful trial of the first horticulture train, a specially-created temperature-maintained, 1,600-MT capacity train, from Bhusawal in Maharashtra to Azadpur mandi in New Delhi a couple of days ago, the Centre plans to introduce a similar train for Punjab. P K Basu, secretary, agriculture and cooperation, Government of India, said similar trains for Punjab and the North- Eastern states were the Centre’s main priorities.

Bajaj Lighting, the lighting division of Rs 2,700-crore Bajaj Electricals Ltd, is planning to supply compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) to domestic lamp makers. The company is mulling utilising its excess production of CFLs of nearly one million (after having met the domestic demand and export requirements) for this purpose.

CFLs are manufactured at its Nasik unit in Maharashtra. The company currently produces nearly 4 million (40 lakh) CFL lamps a month at Nasik unit. Of these, nearly 3 million (30 lakh) CFLs are sold in the domestic market while a small portion of it is exported.

NASHIK: To attract more tourists to Nashik, the Forest Development Corporation of Maharashtra (FDCM) is planning to set up an eco-tourism centre at its 105-acre nursery near Makhmalabad village in Nashik. "The project, which will be set up on 8 acres of land, will include a children's park, garden, furnished Swiss cottage tents, cafeteria centre, restaurants, etc.

The first phase of the much-awaited widening of Nashik-Pune Road finally got the Centre’s green signal for the Nashik-Sinnar patch. The finance department’s public private partnership (PPP) committee has also cleared the plan. Nashik-Pune has become one of the busiest roads and proposals for a rail line and extension of roads were being pursued for a long time. Sinnar on his highway is also becoming a hub of activity with the existing Malegaon industrial estate and the upcoming India Bulls

When the small and medium-scale industries relocated to Konkan from Nashik, Thane, Pune and Belapur, they were not prepared to incur losses.
Two years ago, the state drew up a policy to decongest the Nashik, Thane and Pune corridor by giving incentives such as cheap land and labour to small and medium-scale industries to relocate their units to MIDC in Konkan region.