-The Tribune A farmer ends his life every 30 minutes in India. There are some who don’t end up in this pile of statistics and are saved through timely action of family and friends. Ramrao Panchleniwar, a cotton grower in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, is one such survivor. He wished to drown his financial worries in two bottles of insecticide in 2014. In this book titled after him, Ramrao’s life and near-death...
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When power does not empower -Jaideep Hardikar
-The Telegraph With a score of 27.5, hunger in India remains a serious concern, with a complex set of factors, including disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic This Vijaya Dashami, the prime minister, Narendra Modi, said his government aims to make India the strongest military power globally on its own strength. In the preceding weeks, two reports and data sets contrasted our masculine brouhaha with what might perhaps need priority over weaponizing...
More »Seeds of trouble -Jaideep Hardikar
-The Telegraph This year, a combination of factors is hurting the agriculture sector immensely A quiet, reverse transformation is happening in the countryside, and it is disconcerting. This sowing season, growing numbers of farmers are falling back on their bullocks as fuel prices are piercing the roof. The tractor, the symbol of modern farming, is becoming a luxury in the literal sense. The conventional ploughing equipment tied to bullocks costs only a...
More »‘It was as if the entire country was walking’ -Jaideep Hardikar
-RuralIndiaOnline.org Months after walking home 800 kilometres in terrible conditions, migrant labourers in Maharashtra’s Gondia district recall their journey on foot from Telangana during the April-June period of the lockdown When their options ran out, Vijay Koreti and his friends decided to walk home. It was mid-April. India was under a strict lockdown brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. And they wondered how long they could remain stranded in their small shanties in...
More »The only option: farmers' protest -Jaideep Hardikar
-The Telegraph HINTERLAND: Our structural problem — small and marginal rain-fed sustenance farms, over 80 per cent of India’s agriculture sector — remains unaddressed Let’s understand the chronology: before the 2014 general elections, Narendra Modi promised farmers that he would comply with the Swaminathan Commission formula to arrive at a minimum support price for farm produce: a 50 per cent profit over the production cost. Post elections, he reneged on the promise...
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