-The Indian Express Illiteracy high in Bihar, Rajasthan; income low in Karnataka, MP; families largest in UP Over two out of every three rural households own a mobile phone, the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 has found. At the same time, 36 per cent of rural Indians are illiterate, only 10 per cent households have someone with a salaried job and only 8 per cent households earn Rs 10,000 or more...
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Farmers Find their Voice Through Radio in the Badlands of India -Stella Paul
-IPS News TIKAMGARH: Eighty-year-old Chenabai Kushwaha sits on a charpoy under a neem tree in the village of Chitawar, located in the Tikamgarh district in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, staring intently at a dictaphone. “Please sing a song for us,” urges the woman holding the voice recorder. Kushwaha obliges with a melancholy tune about an eight-year-old girl begging her father not to give her away in marriage. The melody melts...
More »Mangar Bani forest: Preserve biodiversity to ensure ecological security -Ghazala Shahabuddin
-Hindustan Times The decision to protect the Mangar Bani forest in Faridabad and a 500-metre buffer as a no-construction zone is a remarkable one. This declaration by Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar recently has been widely welcomed, and could mark a turning point in the battle between the government and environmentalists campaigning to save the Haryana Aravallis, especially the Mangar Bani. The region is under threat from real estate developers and...
More »The promised land -Christophe Jaffrelot
-The Indian Express Government’s insistence on acquisition is rooted in a rush to impose the Gujarat model on the rest of India. The development agenda of the Narendra Modi government implies industrialisation. The BJP’s 2014 mandate was indeed for job creation. The “neo-middle class”, which Modi defined when he was CM of Gujarat as made up of aspiring city dwellers who have just emerged from poverty, supported him more widely than the...
More »Untie the farmer -Ashutosh Varshney
-The Indian Express The debate on the land acquisition bill and the tragic suicide of a farmer in Delhi compel us to reflect on a theme of enduring significance: the role of agriculture and farmers in development. What has the historical experience all over the world been? How is India’s agrarian narrative different — or identical? What can India learn from international experience? Many years ago, I wrote a book, Democracy, Development...
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