Gujarat government has calculated that the state's farmers suffered losses to the tune of Rs 4,000 crore last year as a result of export restrictions imposed by the Government of India on raw cotton. "Thanks to the restrictions, Gujarat's farmers, who exported most of the raw cotton being produced in the state, were forced to sell the commodity to the yarn mills of south India at a price which is...

Some people feel agriculture in India provides employment much beyond its capacity — that is, the number of people working on the farm is many times the actual requirement. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is among the proponents of this view. In his interaction with a group of editors last month, Singh said, “The only way we can raise our heads above poverty is for more people to be taken out of...

The mass migration of farmers moving to urban India is becoming a worrisome trend, said planners at a seminar in the Indian Capital. “Many peasants want to leave agriculture, sell land and migrate to cities,” Arvind Mayaram, Additional Secretary and financial advisor to the Ministry of Rural Development told the India Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum on Monday. Seventy per cent of India’s 1.1 billion people currently live in villages,...

A fast growing economy is a thirsty economy and India is no exception—with the country’s water supply already under great strain, India must reassess its consumption to meet escalating demands for water to produce food and energy. Business-as-usual water practices cannot remain the same in India as the economy and its demand for freshwater grows over the coming decades. With an astounding 75% of freshwater already used for agriculture in India,...

At least 29 of the 66 migrants crushed to death in east Delhi when a building collapsed on Monday night hailed from Bengal. The figure signposts the exodus of an abandoned generation and the inability of a state to retain its young or equip them for a better life elsewhere. The death of so many Bengalis has brought out in the open troubling issues that policymakers — both in the state...