Though the number of farmers’ suicides in Maharashtra registered a fall of 930 in 2009, the state with 2,872 suicides continued to be the worst in the country, 10th year in a row, according to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data. The data released in December 2010 confirms a rising trend, with at least 17,368 farmers killing themselves in India in 2009, up by 1,172 from 2008. At least 1,27,151...

Microcredit is losing its halo in many developing countries. Microcredit was once extolled by world leaders like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair as a powerful tool that could help eliminate poverty, through loans as small as $50 to cowherds, basket weavers and other poor people for starting or expanding businesses. But now microloans have prompted political hostility in Bangladesh, India, Nicaragua and other developing countries. In December, the prime minister of...

Over the past decade, as crops have failed year after year, 200,000 farmers have killed themselves Naryamaswamy Naik went to the cupboard and took out a tin of pesticide. Then he stood before his wife and children and drank it. "I don't know how much he had borrowed. I asked him, but he wouldn't say," Sugali Nagamma said, her tiny grandson playing at her feet. "I'd tell him: don't worry, we...

In recent years, the agricultural growth rate has tended to be lower than the population growth rate. This year, the former is nearing the target of 4%. But we still have a very large percentage of undernourished children, women and men. Poverty and destitution also remain stubborn. The Indian food security enigma rises from the mismatch between the grain mountains and the hungry millions. What are the prospects for ensuring...

From green revolution, Andhra Pradesh wants to move to pink revolution in agriculture, with women in the primary role. The project has started in a small way but hopes to turn 60 per cent of the cultivable area in the state over to organic farming. It will be implemented with the help of women’s self-help groups, which were in the limelight recently for highlighting the usury ways of micro-finance institutions. Already, over a...