The amount of rural reportage in the Indian media remains far too low, with even important stories such as those on farmer suicides tending to be ignored. One of the outspoken critics of this trend has been P Sainath, rural-affairs editor of The Hindu  and 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts. He was also the journalist who originally broke the story on...

India has chalked out an ambitious plan to connect all the villages through telephony and internet at an investment of Rs 15,000 crore, Sam Pitroda, an adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh , said today. "A note for this investment will be sent to the Cabinet very soon," Pitroda, adviser to the Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations, told reporters here. The investment would come from Rs 24,000 crore accumulated...

Video Volunteers, a Goa based chapter of an international community media portal is inviting application for its India Unheard program. It is the second round of program under which selected candidates would be trained to make video reports from their area focusing issues, concerns, actions, innovations, traditions etc related to communities. It’s a one year old endeavor to provide fellowship for citizen journalism.      The Fellowship is open for Hindi speaking...

India will soon be the first country in the world “to enact a food security entitlement act under which every family below the poverty line will get 35 kg of grain”, says M.S. Swaminathan who is in Canada to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta. One of the pioneers of the Green Revolution in India, Swaminathan said India cannot depend on volatile global markets to ensure its food security and...

  The sea change that India’s national scheme for rural employment guarantee has accomplished is hard to fathom, its vastness touching the lives or more than 100 million people. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, subsequently renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, or MGNREGA) was a landmark in Indian legislation. Under the act, as of April 2008, for the first time in India’s history, all rural citizens have a legal right...