Faulty procurement, rising farm inputs force West Bengal farmers to commit suicide LONG known as farmer friendly, West Bengal is now making headlines for farmers’ suicides. Reportedly 31 farmers, including landless farm labourers and small traders of agriculture produce, in the state took their lives between October last year and January. Twenty-one of the 31 deaths are from the state’s rice bowl Burdwan district. And this is probably a reason the spate...

The UPA government has widened the scope of its flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to include works related to agriculture, animal husbandry, poultry, drinking water and sanitation.  In its initial avatar launched over six years ago, the NREGA was limited only to works concerning water and soil conservation, afforestation and land development. It was largely seen as a subsistence dole for the rural people in the lean...

Dr Abhijit Sen is Member, Planning Commission of India. He is a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge (currently on leave as Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University) and has also taught at the Universities of Sussex, Oxford and Cambridge. Besides serving various think tanks in the states and at the centre, Dr Sen has been a consultant with UNDP, ILO, FAO and various other multilateral...

Passing by dense sugarcane and mustard fields, and potholed tracks on the outskirts of rural Lakhimpur Kheri, one reaches the large residential enclave of Mithun Kumar on the Uttar Pradesh-Nepal border. Introductions done, the 52-year-old proudly informs he has just booked a 2,000 sq ft plot in the upcoming Omaxe City township in Lucknow. "It will also have a club house and a mini golf-course once fully developed," he adds. As farmers...

The data show that rural families simply cannot subsist on Farm Incomes alone There must be a bit of Gandhi in all of us because often our idea of India ultimately boils down to the kisan as the standard bearer of the lakhs of villages that comprise India. Perhaps that is why I tend to look for the signs of transformation in the lives of Indian farmers. The changes in...