It’s easier to get a bottle of soft drink than drinking water in Bankura’s Saltora. The CPM-controlled constituency is reeling from a severe water scarcity with the residents alleging that the Left has done precious little to provide purified drinking water in the area. Mrityunjoy Pandit, a 25-year-old resident of Saltora’s Ardhagram village, said the area had always faced water scarcity but this year it was acute because of the scanty rainfall...

The Union Agriculture Ministry has nominated scientists belonging to the ICAR and state agricultural universities as resource-persons in 70 districts of eastern India in an attempt to give a fillip to the Centre's ambitious programme of extending the benefits of green revolution to the region. With paddy and rice production in Punjab and Haryana showing signs of plateauing, the government has been forced to turn its gaze towards the eastern states...

The budget is more concerned about the consumer than the grower A LOOMING food crisis in the world and high food inflation rates at home made Pranab Mukherjee’s proposals to boost agriculture in his 2011 budget more keenly watched than usual. These are factors that clearly weighed with the finance minister who repeatedly said that his principal concern this year has been the continuing high food prices. The squeeze on the...

A target to distribute 1,00,848 quintals of seed has been fixed for the rabi crop in 2010-11, district magistrate Sanjay Prasad said. The target for urea has been fixed to 95,000 metric tonnes while the availability is 32,977 metric tonnes. Similarly, target for DAP is 33,000 metric tonnes while availability is 32,088 metric tonnes. He informed that awareness is being created regarding use of zinc sulphate for the wheat crop....

Three basic necessities of life — tapped drinking water, electricity connection and sanitation — together are not available to 82% of rural Indian households, a government survey has revealed. The three elements were key in the defining of India's new poverty line earlier this year by the Suresh Tendulkar committee, which said that 46% of rural Indians were poor. The poverty line was based on National Sample Survey Organisation report of...