-Down to Earth Without empowering women in farming by recognising them as farmers and giving them land rights, agriculture can’t be sustained and so can’t the economy In Maharashtra’s 2019 Assembly elections, the Vidarbha constituencies presented interesting trends. The region is Important politically not just for the stalwarts who contest from there, but also for the development issues it represents. More than three lakh farmers have committed suicide in India between 1991 and...

-The Hindu The Annual Status of Education Report findings make a clear case for strengthening early childhood education centres One of the big debates in early childhood education is on children’s “school readiness” and whether early childhood education provides them with the requisite skills to cope with the school curriculum. A vast literature exists on the Importance of certain cognitive abilities that are supposed to be developed during the years children spend...

-Economic and Political Weekly In Tamil Nadu, the extreme variation in rainfall had reduced the availability of water to agriculture and caused the groundwater table to fall by 37%. The production of rice, an Important crop, had became particularly precarious. A well-designed upscaling strategy boosted and sustained the production of rice; it also helped the build-up of organic matter and improved soil fertility. This experience shows that the System of Rice...

-The Hindu While opening up the coal mining sector, the govt. must protect the interests of Coal India The Centre’s decision to liberalise norms for entry into coal mining and relax regulations on mining and selling coal in the country is significant in many respects. Amendments to two legacy Acts through the Mineral Laws (Amendment) Ordinance 2020 cleared by the Cabinet on Wednesday will free the sector from restrictions that were inhibiting...

-The Hindu The nation’s current social and political predicament poses an existential challenge Ominous clouds have gathered over India, casting shadows of divisiveness and hate, threatening to undermine civil society and halt or even reverse economic progress. There is today a risk of going over a precipice beyond which there may not be a turning point. As the new decade dawned, the two of us decided to get together to write not on...