-Down to Earth As corruption hijacks procurement centres in Bundelkhand, farmers prefer suicide to a debt trap. Richard Mahapatra reports from Uttar Pradesh with photographer Sayantoni Palchoudhuri A fatal paradox strikes Bundelkhand in the face—an overflowing wheat stock yet an overwhelming number of farmer suicides. Farmers here dread the government wheat procurement centre and the post-mortem house. In Orai, a small town in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, the two are...

-The Times of India It was meant to showcase the government's new-found resolve to push the reforms agenda in order to stanch the declining growth rate and to repulse the perception of governance freeze. Instead, it ended up publicizing yet again the government's vulnerability as well as its reluctance to speed up decision making at the cost of angering allies on the eve of presidential poll.  The UPA on Thursday withdrew its...

-Live Mint   Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh is advocating a new approach to fighting the Maoist insurgency that has gripped 78 districts so far. Apart from development and security, the approach involves politics and justice, he said. In an interview, Ramesh warned that in the rush to attain high growth rates, India was placing the interests of tribals below that of mining firms. The minister suggested the setting up of a...

It is mostly caused by deliberate neglect and designed failure of the way we manage water and land It’s drought time again. Nothing new in this announcement. Each year, first we have crippling droughts between December and June, and then devastating floods in the next few months. It’s a cycle of despair, which is more or less predictable. But this is not an inevitable cycle of nature we must live...

The Government of India has formally launched the news Guidelines of the MGNAREGA based on the Mihir Shah Committee report. The news guidelines include many new works under conservation activities and it strengthens the hands of the village panchayats and gram sabhas. However, the list of works does not include the activities under the system of rice intensification (SRI) which encourages scientific method of paddy cultivation with better yield in...