Priyanka Kakodkar, Editor (Special Projects) of The Times of India, has won the Prem Bhatia Award for excellence in environmental and development reporting for her series of reports on Maharashtra’s agrarian crisis and distressed farmers.  The award will be presented at the 20th Prem Bhatia Memorial Lecture at the India International Centre in New Delhi on August 11 at 6.30pm.  Kakodkar’s four-part series highlighted how farmer suicides in Maharashtra had shot up by over 40% between August 2014 and February 2015 after freak rains and hailstorms claimed two successive crops. It showed how locals in the arid region of Marathwada had been forced to dig up dry river beds for water and how old people were compelled to work as farm hands as migration in the drought-hit region was up by 30%.

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