The Centre has given the State a “very poor” rating The number of claims has jumped to 3,03,960 by the end of January The implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act in Maharashtra has dismayed Adivasis and activists alike. Even the State government is painfully aware of its slow progress. With only 1.19 per cent of the 2,39,542 total claims under the Act received till...

Statistical poverty lines should not become real-life eligibility criteria for food entitlements.  Nothing is easier than to recognise a poor person when you see him or her. Yet the task of identifying and counting the poor seems to elude the country's best experts. Take for instance the “headcount” of rural poverty — the proportion of the rural population below the poverty line. At least four alternative figures are available: 28...

The Central Statistical Organisation estimate of overall GDP being likely to grow at 7.2 per cent this year has brought back the confidence of the industry and policymakers that the economy has truly turned the corner. But the growth of the farm sector is almost flat (-0.2 per cent), though this too is a pleasant surprise given that it was exposed to the worst drought since 1972. The real worry...

Nearly 2 lakh farmers committed suicide in India since 1997. The share of big five states accounted for 1,22,823 suicides in this 12 year period. The data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau points out that 16,196 farmers in India ended their life in 2008. K Nagaraj, an economist, in his report Farmers' suicides in India: Magnitude, Trends and Spatial Patterns, says, "The title to land was taken as the...

With seven months of drought each year, Indian farmers are rarely far from disaster. Could the answer be as simple as a piece of plastic tubing? In Maharashtra, western India, the temperature is soaring into the forties. The monsoon is over and there are months of relentless baking sunshine ahead. The fertile lands are turning into kilometre after kilometre of scorched brown earth. Farming has become almost impossibly difficult. Solitary figures...