In India (and elsewhere) we have several people’s struggles which are protesting against displacement and trying to protect their sustainable life-styles and livelihoods based on farmlands, pastures and forests, rivers and coastal areas. These struggles involve farmers, forest-produce gatherers (tribals particularly), pastoral people, fisherfolk and others with related livelihoods. These traditional livelihoods have been passed on from generation to generation, but are now increasingly threatened on a scale never seen...

Various ways and means of checking irregularities in the implementation of rural employment guarantee scheme have been discussed. One suggestion is that workers employed under this scheme ought to be organised. The first step in this direction was the formation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Workers' Union - Gujarat (NREGWUG), which was followed by other similar efforts in Rajasthan, parts of Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere. Paulomee Mistry , general secretary...

In the cotton fields of Vidarbha in central India, grief is a constant companion. Wherever you turn, there are heart-breaking stories of suicide. In the village of Mangi, friends and family are preparing the body of Laxman Tekam for burial. Women are wailing and men have tears streaming down their cheeks. Laxman was a cotton farmer who hanged himself from the roof beam of his small house after his debts...

With pulses going off the menu of poor people in the country, scientists from across the country gathered at Palampur Agriculture University (PAU) to mull over the issue. About 250 scientists deliberated on the steps that could be taken to increase the yield of major kharif pulse crops in the country in a three-day conference held in the university. While addressing the scientists in the conference, Tej Partap, Vice-Chancellor, said several...

THE BROTHERS are named Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol. But their similarity to the Bollywood Deol family ends there. Two-year-old ‘Bobbeed yol’, as he is called, has straggly, light brown hair and loose skin forms wrinkles on his stickthin limbs. He squats listlessly on a cement parapet, watching older boys play. His elder brother, five-year-old ‘Sunneed yol’, is malnourished too, and sick with pneumonia — for the nth time in...