Community initiative tackles perennial problem of groundwater salinity In a rare community-driven initiative, the residents of a nondescript village near Deeg in Bharatpur district of Rajasthan have solved the perennial problem of groundwater salinity by laying a one-km cement pipeline to get the Yamuna river waters from a feeder canal situated nearby. The small Madhera village had been facing difficulty in getting clean and pure water for both drinking and irrigation for...

-The Times of India   Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) general secretary Akhil Gogoi is known for drawing huge crowds in his demonstration programmes. But on Monday, when the RTI activist launched an indefinite sit-in stir against the recent hike in electricity tariff, he had only three men and a woman by his side. Is people's support for his campaign on social issues on the decline? Akhil reacts instantly. "The government...

Breakthroughs in the production and productivity of wheat and rice in the sixties and of cotton recently have been much appreciated, but similar advances in maize have gone largely unnoticed and unsung. Maize output has soared in the past 10 years from a mere 12 million tonnes in 2000-01 to over 21 million tonnes in 2010-11. This increase can largely be attributed to a surge in crop productivity rather than...

Developing countries will now have to battle IP issues related to new agricultural technologies at WIPO instead of WTO The World Intellectual Property Organization has announced clearly that it intends to play a role—and considering the clout WIPO enjoys it implies a significant part—in promoting intellectual property (IP) in agriculture to enhance productivity. The UN body stepped into this touchy arena with a seminar at its Geneva headquarters that has gone...

July is a month when we need to remind ourselves how reforms have changed India since 1991, from vulnerability to resilience, whether to external shocks (say, oil) or internal ones (droughts). In 2009, we witnessed the worst drought since 1972, yet the agricultural growth rate stayed positive (0.4%), nor did we resort to any major cereal imports. And in 2010-11, we are likely to have a record harvest of 241 million...