It's that time of the year when Kishore Lal Singh's eyes almost involuntarily scan the skies. The monsoons are coming. In the months ahead, for this Bhil farmer growing cotton, maize and soya south of the Malwa plateau in Madhya Pradesh, life will again hang on a knife's edge. If it rains well, his two bighas (about four basketball courts) of cotton will yield 1,000 kg. If not, he will...

-Reuters   Sitting at the edge of fields in the heart of India's grain bowl, Gurdayal Singh Malik shakes his head in resignation about the lack of workers needed for his 60-acre farm, blaming the government's flagship welfare program, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), for the shortage. Ever since the start of the program, which guarantees 100 days of work a year for rural households, the flow of...

In his lifetime, Nigamanand, an ascetic fighting a lonely battle against quarrying activities in Uttarakhand, tried to draw the attention of the national media to an environmental disaster waiting to happen in the state. In his death, the 36-year-old Sadhu, who went into a coma and died on Wednesday following his four-month-long fast in the same hospital at Dehra Dun where Ramdev was admitted, has forced civil society, politicians and the...

-The Hindustan Times   Female foeticide, infanticide and human trafficking make India the world's 4th most dangerous country for women, with Afghanistan's violence and poverty taking it to the top spot, followed by Congo due to horrific levels of rape, a Thomson Reuters Foundation expert poll said on Wednesday. Pakistan and Somalia ranked third and fifth, respectively, in the global survey of perceptions of threats ranging from domestic abuse and economic discrimination...

Farmers of Gorakhpur and adjoining villages are divided over the issue of the Haryana government acquiring 1,500 acres of prime agricultural land for the 2,800 mw nuclear project, the first in the state. While most senior farmers are on relay dharna for several months taking a maximalist position of not giving their land away, the younger ones have formed their own samiti setting down outlandish, even if negotiable, demands in...