-Down to Earth Farmers want drought to be declared; government dilly-dallies According to the second survey carried out by the Revenue Department of Maharashtra, more than 20,000 villages in the state have received less than 50 per cent agricultural yield this year. The state has a total of 43,722 villages. This means that close to half the state is in an agricultural crisis. An earlier survey had put this number at a mere...
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Inflation: Three reasons why rising food prices could be here to stay -M Rajshekhar
-The Economic Times None of the standard explanations quite explain the rise in food prices India has seen: pronounced since 2006 and alarming after 2010. Drought and poor rains? The country has seen good aggregate rainfall in most of those years. Spike in global prices? Those were high in 2007-08, not now. Fragmented value chains that allow middlemen to grab large margins? The value chain has always been fragmented. Growth has slowed...
More »Solar panels & solidarity: The women farmers of Edamalakudi -P Sainath
-PSainath.org The adivasi women of Edamalakudi, Kerala's remotest panchayat, have formed a headload workers' group, helped light up their villages with solar power, and practice group farming in wild elephant territory. All are Muthavan tribals. Almost all are members of Kerala's extraordinary anti-poverty and gender justice movement - Kudumbashree. They are also neighbours of Chinnathambi, the keeper of the Wilderness Library. When 60 women in Edamalakudi carried about a hundred solar...
More »$15 bn rollover of subsidy costs into next budget?
-Reuters The finance minister is finding it harder and harder to meet the government's budget promises and may sweep as much as $15 billion in subsidy costs into next year's accounts to ensure he hits fiscal targets ahead of the Lok Sabha, ministry officials say. Finance minister, P Chidambaram, insists that the fiscal deficit target of 4.8% of GDP for the year to March 31, 2014, is a red line that will...
More »Abortions in Mumbai up by alarming 61% in 3 years -Sanjeev Shivadekar & Malathy Iyer
-The Times of India MUMBAI: The city has seen an alarming 61 % rise in the number of abortion cases over the past three years, according to the BMC statistics received by the public health department. The city recorded 27,256 abortions in 2012-13 against 16,977 abortions registered in 2010-11 , reveals the BMC data on abortions conducted in public and private hospitals in its jurisdiction. But government officials find nothing suspicious in this...
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