-The New Indian Express She said that a majority of farmers are labour class and are usually nomadic, landless or smallholding farmers. BENGALURU: If halal meat is boycotted, as is being demanded by Hindu organisations, it will lead to similar consequences as the ban on cow slaughter did. It will impact the livelihoods of farmers severely, warned experts.Dr Sylvia Karpagam, a public health researcher who recently released a report on the effects...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org With the COVID-19 driven lockdown, Chenakonda Balasami and other pastoralists in Telangana, on the road for months, are finding it difficult to access food and new grazing grounds – or return to their villages Nalgonda, Telangana: “How are you? What are you doing? How many days is this going to last?” Chenakonda Balasami asks his son on the phone. “Is it that extreme? Are police there at our place? Are people...

-The Hindu Among this year’s Padma Shri awardees are a father and daughter who turned a barren wasteland into a riot of trees and crops Furrowed with deep gullies, its topsoil all but gone, this degraded patch of land near Odagaon in Odisha’s Nayagarh district was once a dense forest. Whenever nature tried to reclaim it, the little shoots would be nibbled away by goats and Sheep. The villagers who owned the...

-The Telegraph NRC, NPR emblematic of our hypocrisy that turns a blind eye to those persecuted by us here Hatingaram’s life is less “here”, more “there”. Here — his village. There — in the open, across the country, under the sky. The ‘Raika’ — a semi-nomadic pastoralist from Rajasthan — are always on the move, lock, stock and barrel. Literally. In his home state, he is a near-absent citizen; in Madhya Pradesh, a...

-Down to Earth The number of camels, pigs, donkeys, horses, mules, ponies and indigenous cattle breeds has drastically declined The number of Indian livestock has increased due to a rise in the population of Sheep and goats, even as indigenous cattle and other farm animals have declined, according to the 20th Livestock Census. The livestock census has been periodically conducted once in every five years since 1919. But the 20th census was conducted...