-Livemint.com Odisha is a front-runner in women’s land ownership, much of it owing to government policies from the 1980s. But has ownership led to empowerment? Surrounded by sun-drenched paddy fields interspersed with jackfruit and banana trees, Sanakusupadu is a hamlet in Odisha’s tribal-dominated district of Rayagada. Here, almost every married woman owns land. No matter how small the holding, land documents of the 62 households in this village bear the names of the...

-The Tribune Agrarian society vs a non-agrarian economy poses a huge political challenge. JUST how many farmers are there in India? This is not merely a statistical question. This is a question of policy and political significance. We have all grown up reading about India as an agrarian economy, with a majority of its population engaged in farming. Does that continue to be the case? Or has the number of farmers declined...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org Imagine a democratic protest where a million farmers, labourers and others march to the capital and compel discussion of the exploding crisis of the countryside in a special three-week session of Parliament India’s agrarian crisis has gone beyond the agrarian. It’s a crisis of society. Maybe even a civilizational crisis, with perhaps the largest body of small farmers and labourers on earth fighting to save their livelihoods. The agrarian crisis is no...

-OdishaTV.in Meet Daitari Nayak, a 70 year old farmer who single-handedly carved out a three kilometer canal from the Gonasika mountains so that the water stream could reach down and irrigate the parched fields and settlements below. The "canal man" as people fondly call him, patiently cut the steep hillsides and cleared the rocks for more than four years to make the stream slowly snake down. Bhubaneswar: The refreshing greens in more...

-The Hindu The focus must be on waste management and recycling We celebrated ‘World Environment Day’ (June 5) with a critical theme: beat plastic pollution. Since India was the global host of this year’s event, and also one of the victims of plastic pollution, we should view this danger seriously. The theme urges governments, industries, communities and individuals to come together and explore sustainable alternatives. It also urges this target group to...