High cotton prices spun out enough problems for India’s $62 billion textiles industry, but weaved gains for growers and traders in 2010. Amid pulls and pressures from the conflicting interests, a ministers’ group under the guidance of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee kept reviewing the price and crop situation, with excessive winter rains playing spoilsport. The textiles industry pulled out all stops to lobby with the textiles, commerce and finance ministries seeking a...

When French Jesuit priest and passionate agriculturist Henri de Laulanie developed the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) method of cultivation for Madagascar’s poor farmers in the 1980s, he probably had no idea that millions of farmers elsewhere in the world would one day benefit from it as well. Here in India, one of the 40 countries where SRI is now in use, poor tillers of the land are even helping propagate...

Italy, the United States, Greece, Belgium and the United Kingdom top a list of two dozen developed countries that let their most vulnerable children fall even further behind, with enormous consequences not only for the youngsters themselves but for the economy and society at large, according to a new United Nations report released today.“As debates rage on austerity measures and social spending cuts, the report focuses on the hundreds of...

West Bengal's farmers switched to new scientific material called 'Poly Mulching' (made out of plastic) to protect crops. The North Bengal region has got some highly fertile agricultural land. But weeds, lack of proper sunlight, heavy downpour, soil erosion, seed germination and cold weather conditions often result in harming the crops and ultimately curtailing agricultural production. However, to protect crops from such problems, farmers have now found a suitable way by using...

Sample some data on the microfinance performance in India: According to the data provided by www.mixmarket.org, microfinance in India reached close to 270 lakh active borrowers in 2009, with the average loan size close to Rs 8,000. This translates into total borrowing to over Rs 20,000 crore. Though this number seems large, it represents only 0.3% of our GDP. Thus, large swathes of poor, both in our villages and urban...