Accusing the NDA government of Bihar of being 'anti-farmer', opposition RJD today alleged that the state had witnessed a negative agriculture growth rate during its term. Contrary to the agriculture growth rate of 7.74% during the Rabri Devi regime between 2001 to 2005, the farm sector's output nosedived to register a negative growth rate when the NDA goverment took over in November 2006, RJD national spokesperson Md Iliyas Hussain told reporters...

Despite erratic and unevenly distributed monsoon this year, the government has predicted that food production in the state will touch 90.94 lakh tonnes in 2010-11. Agriculture minister Umesh V Katti on Tuesday said this year's production will surpass the target of 87.27 lakh tonnes. "This will be made possible by implementing technologies like precision farming and timely distribution of quality Seeds," he pointed out. EXPERT PANEL ON CARDS The government will soon set...

Trade unions and labour rights activists blame the high suicide rate in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, on the practices of the garment industry. TIRUPUR has carved out a niche for itself in the world of garments. Its phenomenal growth in the highly competitive global scenario, particularly in the past two decades, has been made possible by the entrepreneurial spirit of its manufacturers and exporters and the sweat and labour of thousands of...

Apni kheti, apna khaad / Apna beej, apna swaad (Our own farm, our own fertiliser / Our own Seeds, our own taste) -- Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi. A farmer from Tandia village in Varanasi has a solution to India's burgeoning food crisis. In a land where poverty, hunger, malnutrition and farmer suicides are rampant, Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi's innovation could work wonders. He has single-handedly developed a number of high yielding, nutritious...

With a gas-guzzler of an economy, India had been spending tens of billions of dollars annually to import petroleum. And so its 2009 policy on biofuels mandated that by 2017, India would have enough biofuel production to cover at least 20 percent of the country’s oil consumption. The government has in fact been encouraging the cultivation of jatropha curcas for the past seven years, believing that would be the fastest way...