-The Hindu Business Line Mangalore (Karnataka): More than 900 families in Dakshina Kannada district have taken up the SRI (System of Rice Intensification) method of paddy cultivation, according to Mahaveer Ajri, Regional Director of the Shri Kshetra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project (SKDRDP), an NGO working for rural development in Karnataka. Addressing presspersons here on Tuesday, he said the method is aimed at increasing the yield. Though paddy is the main food crop,...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Sanitation projects to reduce open defecation, increasing green cover and emphasis on creating assets form the crux of the Narendra Modi-led government's blueprint for redeploying UPA's flagship social sector programme - the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or MGNREGA. Top officials aware of the government's re-orientation roadmap for the rural employment guarantee scheme, being steered by rural development minister Nitin Gadkari, told ET that assessment...

-Deccan Herald The Green Revolution has changed life in Indian villages, but the main beneficiaries were the landlords. Daily labourers remain poor and marginalised. The limits of using ever more fertiliser and pesticides are becoming apparent. Many farmers are confused because extension services want them to reconsider practices they were told to abandon not that long ago. A member of the Santal tribe, an Adivasi community, assesses things from the village perspective. Since independence...

-The Times of India RANCHI: Wading past the surging devotees, Poonam Devi makes a desperate bid to reach a man walking a few metres ahead of her. Her struggle ends in vain as he disappears in the crowd out to witness the "rath yatra" that attracts thousands to the Jagannath temple every year in June-July. Tired and breathless, she stops to explain that he is the man who took her 14-year-old...

-New York Times News Service SHEOHAR (Bihar): He wore thick black eyeliner to ward off the evil eye, but Vivek, a tiny 1-year-old living in a village of mud huts and diminutive people, had nonetheless fallen victim to India's great scourge of malnutrition. His parents seemed to be doing all the right things. His mother still breast-fed him. His family had six goats, access to fresh buffalo milk and a hut filled...