The rural population is at present estimated at 85 crores. Ten per cent of the households are completely landless. Another 52 per cent have holdings of less than 0.2 hectare. The per capita agricultural land in the rural areas has come down to 0.12 hectare. According to the National Sample Survey, the annual income of an agricultural household from farming is less than Rs 12,000 and from all sources it...
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If words were food, nobody would go hungry
“THE world’s attention is back on your cause.” That was Bill Gates talking to agricultural scientists gathered recently to honour the late Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution. The tycoon-turned-philanthropist was right. This week, the world—in the guise of 60-odd heads of state including the pope—held the first United Nations food summit since 2002. As the world’s attention turns from the receding financial crisis, it is switching to one...
More »Token gesture by V Venkatesan
TWENTY-ONE judges of the Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice of India (CJI), posted the details of their assets on the court’s website. The details of assets of one judge, Justice H.S. Bedi, have not yet been provided. Justice B.N. Agrawal, who retired recently, also provided the details of his assets on the website on special request. (The details are available at http:// www.supremecourtofindia.nic.in/assets.htm.) The court has claimed that the...
More »India to import rice, says Pranab
India, a traditional rice exporter, will import the grain for the first time in 20 years to meet a projected shortfall of the crop hit by drought and floods, the government said on Wednesday. “We started rice season, that is from October 2009, with almost six million tonnes of surplus ... Still there is a projection that there is some shortfall of Kharif crops. So to make it up, we...
More »Plastic Roads Offer Greener Way to Travel in India by Mridu Khullar
In the 1990s, Ahmed Khan’s company in Bangalore, India, churned out hundreds of thousands of plastic bags and other packaging material each month that eventually ended up as garbage. Now, he is in the business of scouring the city’s landfills and trash cans to reclaim some of that waste and pave the way to a more environmentally friendly enterprise. Mr. Khan, 60, is trying to solve two of the biggest...
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