-The Hindu India's growth story of the last two decades has had one recurring theme: that the pattern of economic growth is accentuating insecurities. Yet, there continues to be a deep divide over whether the gains from growth ought to be ploughed back to achieve social security for everyone. Social security has come to be linked to job benefits, tying it to one's status as a worker in the formal or...

-Kafila.org With depressing regularity, the newspapers have been reporting farmers' suicides in many states. Recently, P Sainath wrote on BBC that around 296,438 farmers have committed suicide since 1995. He also mentions that cash crop cultivators of cotton, sugar cane, vanilla, pepper, groundnut etc account for the bulk of those suicides. According to a PIL heard by the Supreme Court in December 2014, around 3146 farmers in Maharashtra have committed suicide...

-The Hindu Year 2015 will be crucial as shale oil firms begin to feel the pinch of low prices Are falling oil prices good or bad for the global economy? And how do they work for India? Till recently these questions were no-brainers. Cheaper oil is obviously good for the global economy; for an energy-intensive economy such as India's, which also depends on imported oil for meeting four-fifths of its needs, a...

-IPS News NAGAPATNAM, India - Standing amidst his lush green paddy fields in Nagapatnam, a coastal district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a farmer named Ramajayam remembers how a single wave changed his entire life. The simple farmer was one of thousands whose agricultural lands were destroyed by the 2004 Asian tsunami, as massive volumes of saltwater and metre-high piles of sea slush inundated these fertile fields in the...

-IPS News SUNDARBANS, India- When the gentle clucking grows louder, 50-year-old Sukomal Mandal calls out to his wife, who is busy grinding ingredients for a fish curry. She gets up to thrust leafy green stalks through the netting of a coop and two-dozen shiny hens rush forward for lunch. In the Sundarbans, where the sea is slowly swallowing up the land, Mandal's half-hectare farm is an oasis of prosperity. The elderly couple resides...