A crop-killing fungus is spreading out of Africa towards the world’s great wheat-growing areas IT IS sometimes called the “polio of agriculture”: a terrifying but almost forgotten disease. Wheat rust is not just back after a 50-year absence, but spreading in new and scary forms. In some ways it is worse than child-crippling polio, still lingering in parts of Nigeria. Wheat rust has spread silently and speedily by 5,000 miles in...

PATNAGARH: For generations they have been weaving magic, from bamboo. But, traditional bamboo workers are now close to breaking and the onslaught of substitute materials and government policies since past some decades have driven bamboo weavers to poverty and starvation. The bamboo artisans of Kolpada in Khaprakhol block under Balangir district are leading a life of penury. Inhabited by primitive Kol tribe, by virtue of which the village gets its name,...

SUKHRAM Gopal, a farmer from Bagli village in Devas district in Madhya Pradesh, relies on gut feel and tradition to be doubly sure that the rains will bless him with a bountiful harvest. On the day of the Gangaur festival, which typically falls in March-April and is a celebration of the monsoon and harvesting, Gopal starts sowing wheat. “NINe days later, if the seeds grow in a uniform manner, we...

THE Indian Bureau of Mines, in its Indian Minerals Yearbook–2005, notes that Chhattisgarh has 28 different types of minerals, with coal and iron ore being the most abundant. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), in its comprehensive book Rich Lands, Poor People: Is ‘Sustainable' MiNINg Possible?, says that around 16 per cent of India's coal reserves, 10 per cent of its iron-ore reserves, 5 per cent of its limestone...

By noon daily, the reception area of Surya Clinic in Muzaffarpur district of Bihar begins to fill up. Patients admitted for gyanecological care are clothed in the blue robes of the hospital and ushered into clean rooms with freshly made beds. At the state-run primary health centre (PHC) in Bochahan block of Muzaffarpur, which also offers family planNINg services, disposable gloves are washed and re-used and rusted beds are covered with...