-The Hindu Tirupur (Tamil Nadu): "Farming population has shrunk in the country by about 25 per cent since Independence and continues to dwindle at a steady pace. Farmers' suicides are still a concern. "To arrest the trend and save the farm sector, the farming community should be given adequate representation in the newly constituted NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog that replaced the Planning Commission". This is one of the...
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Jharkhand’s Asur tribe losing traditional skills in modern times -Abhishek Saha
-The Hindustan Times Polpol Path (Jharkhand): Laldeo Asur passes his days basking in the mellow winter sun, his 70-year-old body now too frail for the rigours of village life. But it is not his advancing age he is too concerned about but the advance of modernity on his tribe, the Asurs. Laldeo knows that after him there will be none to practice a traditional technology for iron smelting, a craft perfected by his...
More »Report on India’s tribal population kept under wraps -Mukta Patil
-Down to Earth High-level committee report was submitted to the Prime Minister's Office in May 2014, and includes radical recommendations Tribal communities have historically faced the brunt of the state's development agenda. It seems the attitude of the government towards the tribal communities has changed little over the years. A report of the current status of tribal communities, submitted to the Prime Minister's Office in May 2014, has been kept under wraps with...
More »Organic Route Turns Farms Green Again -S Deepak Karthik
-The New Indian Express NAGAPATTINAM/KARAIKAL: With just two weeks left for pongal, the farming community along the Nagapattinam and Karaikal coasts was abuzz with preparation for reaping the harvest of six months' hard work. However, the tsunami on December 24, 2004 swallowed their paddy fields whole, bringing with it tonnes of mud and saline water. Ten years on, farmers are now posting twice the yield of their pre-tsunami days, with the...
More »The great forgetting -Himanshu
-The Indian Express The Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) of agricultural households, released last week by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), is the second one ever to be done. The SAS of 2003 was necessitated by the agrarian crisis of the time. Farmer suicides had reached a peak, and the reference year for the survey, 2002-2003, had seen severe drought. The agricultural sector was in crisis, with growth rates slowing to...
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