Andhra farmers shun growing paddy this kharif in absence of buyers, storage space Achanta, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, hit the headlines in 1967 with a record rice yield in the kharif or monsoon crop season. It was the time of the Green Revolution. N Subba Rao, a farmer from the village, harvested three tonnes of paddy from just one kilogramme of seeds. Other farmers followed suit and the village...

-The Hindu   Seventeen people have died and over nine lakh people have been affected in the nearly fortnight-long spell of rains in West Bengal. Ten districts have been affected by heavy floods, Disaster Management Minister Javed Khan has said in the Assembly. He said that 25,750 mud houses have been damaged or washed away due to the rains caused by a depression. The districts affected were Malda, Murshidabad, Purba Medinipur, Howrah, North...

The state food department has drawn up elaborate plans to develop the infrastructure of the public distribution system (PDS) following chief minister Mamata Banerjee's visit to Khadya Bhavan last week. During the visit, the chief minister asked that a committee comprising trade union members be formed and that they come up with suggestions on how to improve the infrastructure of the PDS scheme and evict corruption from the system. A...

Nearly 100 districts across the country listed as child-vulnerable areas Nearly 100 districts across the country have been listed as child-vulnerable areas wherein children are at a high risk of losing parental care and getting exposed to difficult circumstances, according to a new survey conducted by SOS Children's Villages of India, a non-government organisation that helps orphaned children. Koraput district in Orissa has the highest child vulnerability index followed by Balaghat district...

A Tamil economist, the late S. Guhan, used to say that Delhi was a capital in search of a country. I was reminded of that remark during the fortnight of May 29 to June 11, 2011. In that fortnight, if one watched the ‘national’ channels or read the ‘national’ newspapers, one would think all of India was involved in one way or the other with the ideas and practices of...