The film industry is tackling the controversial issue of farmer suicides After drinking pesticide out of sheer desperation, poverty-stricken farmer Nandu collapsed. He did this on screen in front of an audience at a packed multiplex cinema, which issued a collective gasp. Nandu is just a character in a recent Indian film about farmer suicides. But his tragic fate has been a reality for thousands of farmers across India. For the first...
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Maharashtra polls: all fronts and no back by P. Sainath
Will the Congress-NCP gain from a multiplicity of fronts which could dissipate the anti-Congress vote? Or will the Shiv Sena-BJP benefit from the Third Front’s cutting into the Congress-NCP vote? Whatever the failings of Maharashtra’s political class, and these are many, a lack of optimism is not among them. Even after the last date for the withdrawal of nominations to the Assembly elections, there are more fronts, real and imagined,...
More »Copenhagen negotiating text: 200 pages to save world? by David Adam
The draft agreement being discussed ahead of December’s crucial Copenhagen summit is long, confusing and contradictory. It is a blueprint to save the world. And yet it is long, confusing and contradictory. Negotiators have released a draft version of a new global agreement on cLIMate change, which is widely billed as the last chance to save the planet from the ravages of global warming. Running to some 200 pages, the...
More »Grow more rice with fewer inputs and save the environment for free!
The procurement of rice for distribution under the proposed Right to Food scheme has renewed the fears of irreversible depletion of water table in India’s grain producing regions. It is feared that unless more scientific and progressive methods of rice cultivation are used, the otherwise welcome scheme would lead to more sowing of summer paddy leading to more injudicious water use and further soil degradation. Many rural NGOs and agricultural...
More »Undiluted truths about rich polluters by Jayanthi Natarajan
It came as no big surprise to anyone at all that US President Barack Obama made a speech filled with noble intentions, but very little concrete action, on the issue of cLIMate change at the CLIMate Change Summit, which just concluded in New York. Environment activist had great hopes that the US President would think "out of the box" and take the lead in ensuring that the US, one of...
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