Andhra farmers shun growing paddy this kharif in absence of buyers, storage space Achanta, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, hit the headlines in 1967 with a record rice yield in the kharif or monsoon crop season. It was the time of the Green Revolution. N Subba Rao, a farmer from the village, harvested three tonnes of paddy from just one kilogramme of seeds. Other farmers followed suit and the village...

Protest against government attempts to suppress democratic resistance by villagers Police avoid confrontation; no work on construction of boundary wall As Orissa on Wednesday made failed attempts to acquire land for the Posco steel plant in Jagatsinghpur district, five political parties announced that they would begin an indefinite dharna opposing the Naveen Patnaik government's attempts to suppress democratic resistance by villagers who oppose establishment of the project in their locality. The dharna would...

The Right to Education Act, which lacks a transformational vision, is geared to preparing foot soldiers for the global market. THE most encouraging and delightful news regarding school education in India since the pro-market reforms began in 1991 came from Erode district in Tamil Nadu recently. To be sure, it is neither about the World Bank-sponsored District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) of the 1990s nor about the internationally funded and...

Report is now dead, says Congress A war of words broke out at the first meeting of the newly constituted Public Accounts Committee (PAC) here on Tuesday. While some members were vociferous in their view that the committee's contentious draft report on the 2G spectrum allocation scam was “dead” as it was “returned” and “rejected” by the Lok Sabha Speaker for lack of proper procedure in its adoption, others felt...

There was high drama on Tuesday evening when it was announced that 12 “unwilling farmers” will receive the titles to land within the Tata Motors small car factory site at Singur by late evening as a start to the process of returning land in the area. The Hooghly district administration, however, asserted that no such move would be initiated on the day. The clarification from the district authorities came shortly after...