The chattering classes of urban India are engaged in animated discussions about Didi, scams, policy paralysis , faltering reforms and declining growth. Meanwhile, the farming classes, who haven't seen much reform since the Green Revolution 50 years ago, continue to combine bits of modern technology with their ingenious capacity for 'jugaad' in transforming traditional agriculture. Here are a few examples. The tractor displaced the bullock in ploughing and other farm operations....

Nagri (Ranchi), April 25: A piece of land is valued either Rs 1.55 lakh or Rs 340.5 crore. Take your pick. If you recover from this shock, you can proceed to figure out who should get in part or full 227.71 acres at Nagri, 15km from Ranchi. Construction of IIM-Ranchi and National University for Study and Research in Law (NUSRL) campuses has halted after villagers refused to budge from the acres,...

They prefer to migrate to cities to earn a livelihood ‘Apply for work, get work, and get paid on time.' This is how the Union government's scheme promising 100 days of guaranteed work in a financial year to a rural household took off in 2006. However, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) has failed to come as a relief for people especially those in drought-hit regions of the...

Rural India has been denied access to globalisation, penalising farmers and farm labour. For the farmer, the government's policy is best described as Dhritarashtra's embrace. After the Mahabharata war was over, the old king met his nephews, the victorious Pandavas, and embraced them, one by one, in a gesture of forgiving and affection. When, Bhima's turn came, the loving embrace was so tight that it crushed a metal dummy of the second...

-Reuters   PERLE: As a shiny red harvester bounces across the black earth into the first row of sugar cane, excited schoolchildren run after it and several dozen men stand gaping in the wake of its swift progress. It's the first time that Perle, a village on the banks of the Krishna river in Maharashtra state, has seen a machine used for cutting the tough cane. "This machine will harvest my entire field today,"...