-The Hindu Business Line The risk of water availability is a painful reality in south Asian agriculture including India. Any deviation from the monsoon causes problems for the farm community and poses threat to food security in the region. The variability in precipitation in India has actually increased in recent years. While comparing the variability of precipitation (given by standard deviation) between two phases, 1950-75 and 1976-2010, in two geographically dispersed districts...
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Benarasi death net-Biswajeet Banerjee
-Sunday Pioneer A cluster of villages engaged in weaving the exquisite Benarasi sarees is in the midst of a serious health crisis. More than 1 lakh people from this once prosperous region have fallen prey to aggressive tuberculosis. Poor living conditions, working in dark rooms and constant inhalation of minute silk threads have weakened the lungs of these artisans. With an average monthly income of not more than Rs3,000, it is...
More »Whose loo? Why 600 million Indians still defecate in the open-Ierene Francis
-TheAlternative.in Over 600 million Indians have no access to toilets - if you line up the countries where open defecation is practised, India leads and also has more than twice the number as the next 18 countries with no access to toilets. The proportion is worse in rural India - where 68% of rural households don't have their own toilets (Source:NSSO, WHO). Why is open defecation an issue? Open defecation has been linked...
More »Between 2010 and 2012, pace of job creation was slowest in a decade -Chetan Chauhan
-The Hindustan Times A sea of young people on a Delhi Metro last week offered a glimpse into the despair within young India. Most had taken the train from Delhi University — a hub of students from across the country — to the heart of the city, to take a test and apply for a job with a national bank. But there were only a few thousand vacancies — and 100,000 youngsters...
More »MGNREGA: A tale of rural revival -Varad Pande and Neelakshi Mann
-Live Mint Rural livelihoods have improved because of MGNREGA. It is wrong to say the scheme has not worked If some recent news articles are to be believed, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), a scheme that costs less than 0.35% of India's gross domestic product (GDP), has crashed the country's economy. The latest to join this bandwagon of criticism is an editorial in Mint. ("MGNREGA: A tale...
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