The film industry is tackling the controversial issue of farmer suicides After drinking pesticide out of sheer desperation, poverty-stricken farmer Nandu collapsed. He did this on screen in front of an audience at a packed multiplex cinema, which issued a collective gasp. Nandu is just a character in a recent Indian film about farmer suicides. But his tragic fate has been a reality for thousands of farmers across India. For the first...

Will the Congress-NCP gain from a multiplicity of fronts which could dissipate the anti-Congress vote? Or will the Shiv Sena-BJP benefit from the Third Front’s cutting into the Congress-NCP vote?  Whatever the failings of Maharashtra’s political class, and these are many, a lack of optimism is not among them. Even after the last date for the withdrawal of nominations to the Assembly elections, there are more fronts, real and IMAgined,...

Here’s a hypothetical, though not altogether unfamiliar, scenario that academic and writer Sunil Khilnani invoked in a lecture at the British Museum to warn against what he called the “paradox of India’s new prosperity.” He asked his audience to IMAgine two traffic lanes, both at a standstill. After a while traffic in one of the lanes starts moving raising hopes of those stuck in the next lane that they, too,...

Did we just miss a major opportunity? For short while, it seemed that the global financial crisis would focus minds on what is wrong with the current economic growth model and how we can go about changing it. Unfortunately, that moment seems to have passed, at least until the next crisis comes along (which, in current trends, will not be long, since all the major forces that led to the...

The distribution of iron fortified rice is part of the Government of India's push to combat anaemia and it will become a near mandatory programme for the poor, for whom this rice will be inescapable i.e., PDS, ICDS, school meals, etc.  The fact-finding visit was organised by Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA-Kisan Swaraj) and the Right To Food Campaign (RTFC) between June 13th to 15th 2022, and included a...