The Centre is set to constitute a Minimum Support Price (MSP) commission to fix ‘assured price’ tribals would receive for collecting minor forest produce. The produce includes tamarind, medicinal plants, bamboo, mahua, sal seeds and tendu leaves. The panel, which would be formed under the tribal affairs ministry, would get lists of products that each state has declared as non-timber forest produce or minor forest produce (MFP).

Sangli/Satara: Open trailers packed with families and cattle have become a common sight along Maharashtra’s highways — a telling sign of the distress the drought in 15 districts of the state has brought with it. Truckloads of villagers are migrating from the hinterland to cities like Mumbai, Pune and Kolhapur in desperate search for livelihood.

Berhampur: A probe has been ordered into the allegation that child labourers were being engaged in executing works of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in Ganjam district. District Level Monitoring Committee will inquire into the allegation of child labour engaged in the MGNREGS work, district collector Krishan Kumar said here on Tuesday.

Mumbai: An ambitious plan of the Maharashtra government to undertake a tree plantation drive involving 100 crore new saplings will fall short of its target this year. Due to technical difficulties, the state government has revised its target from the 100 crore to 30 crore for this year. The balance 70 crore will be included in the revised target for the next year, an official said.

It is mostly caused by deliberate neglect and designed failure of the way we manage water and land

It’s drought time again. Nothing new in this announcement. Each year, first we have crippling droughts between December and June, and then devastating floods in the next few months. It’s a cycle of despair, which is more or less predictable. But this is not an inevitable cycle of nature we must live with.

Maharashtra is struggling to cope with one of the most severe drought crises in recent times, with many terming it worse than the historic drought of 1972. Rivers have gone dry and the dams are proving insufficient for even drinking water, let alone irrigation. In 12 worst-hit districts, many farmers are forced to abandon the standing crop and sell their livestock due to unavailability of fodder.

The government on Tuesday informed the Lok Sabha about the expansion of the scope of activities permitted under the rural job guarantee scheme by including 30 new activities. These will supplement agricultural and animal husbandry operations along with flood management and sanitation-related works in rural India.

The Ministry of Rural Development has rejected the demand of a parliamentary standing committee to include the works of artisans, weavers and leather workers in the list of permissible works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

The Central Employment Guarantee Council, constituted under the legislation establishing the rural jobs scheme to oversee it, had earlier turned down this recommendation of the standing committee on urban and rural development.

LUCKNOW: The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Monday stayed the arrest of a block pramukh from Gonda, charged under Gangster Act in connection with MNREGS scam in the district. A division bench of Justice Abdul Mateen and Justice SK Saxena said that block pramukh shall not be arrested till substantial material comes against her or the police report is submitted in the court.