-TheWeekendLeader.com Despite a drought-like situation across Rajasthan this year, farmers of a small village on the edge of the Thar Desert reaped good harvest from their fruit orchards. They are growing vegetables this winter. Just five years ago, residents of Khidrat struggled to arrange drinking water, let alone water for irrigation. Due to scanty rainfall (see table), groundwater was not only dipping, it had turned brackish. Even deep borewells would yield saline...

-Down to Earth A Rajasthan village has cylindrical houses that help people cope with extreme weather events It is a chilly December evening in Barmer. The average minimum temperature has dropped to 5° Celsius in this sandy district of western Rajasthan, which borders Pakistan. But thanks to his house, Dayam Khan, a Manganiyar, one of Rajasthan's many communities of traditional musicians, does not need an electric heater or a stove to keep...

-Down to Earth Data also shows higher marginationalisation of the country's Scheduled Tribes The latest data released by the Census of India shows that the child sex ratio (number of girls per 1,000 boys) among Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the country has declined faster than in other categories of the population between 2001 and 2011. But the number of girls born per 1,000 boys is still higher in the ST category than...

-IANS A small sugarcane farmer in western Maharashtra, Bhau Kadam (name changed) and his family, own about three hectares of land. He has two sons who are both graduates and work in Pune. When I asked him why he did not make his sons farmers, he says that farming is hard work, is non-remunerative and it is difficult to get labour. Besides he also thinks that farming is not glamorous, a farmer's...

-Newsclick.in Recent studies have shown that even as India fares better than many developing regions of the world on several indicators of growth and development such as GDP, per capita, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), literacy, life expectancy, etc., the number of malnourished children in India is significantly high. What explains this paradox? The Union Cabinet recently approved a multi-sectoral nutritional programme proposed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to reduce...