A farmers' protest against diversion of irrigation water and land acquisition turned ugly on Tuesday, as three people including a woman, were killed when the police opened fire to quell the agitation which became violent at Bahur village near the Pune-Mumbai express highway. The firing occurred around 11 a.m. Thousands of farmers had gathered in the morning to protest diversion of water from the Pavana Dam to the twin industrial township...

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...

P Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor, The Hindu and 2007 Magsaysay award winner, shares with Pradeep Baisakh his views on the POSCO project, Odisha farmers’ suicides and the National Food Security Bill You have visited Odisha quite often. How, in your view, has it changed in the last 20 years? Inequalities have increased massively. Earlier, we used to hire jeeps which were falling apart. Today, to go to Kalahandi, you have Innovas,...

The fear of losing their land for setting up industrial establishments, as is the case at present in Gadag, is not the only worry for farmers in Karnataka. The farmers in the State appeared to be a distressed lot even with farm lands in their possession. Contrary to what the State Home Department would want us to believe, the State Crime Records Bureau’s (SCRB) report portrays a dismal picture of the incidence...

  THERE is money on offer, but the farmers of Halligudi, a hamlet of 5,500 people in Karnataka's Gadag district, are hardly happy at the prospect of 3,382 acres (one acre is 0.4 hectare) of farmland being acquired for a Rs.32,336-crore steel plant south of National Highway 63, which runs between Karwar and Bellary. The plant is to be set up by the Indian subsidiary of the South Korean steel major Posco...