-The Hindu Handlooms are the one area where India leads the world in skill, creativity and expertise. The Handloom Reservation Act must be strengthened, not repealed Last month, Gajendra Singh, a farmer, hanged himself in New Delhi. His death attracted massive attention as it happened so publicly, in front of the hundreds of people gathered there for Aam Aadmi Party’s rally against the Land Acquisition Bill. Such attention is rare, given that...

-ForeignPolicy.com Roughly 600 million Indians are farmers -- the majority of whom would happily give it up for another job. So why is the Congress party so determined to keep them as peasants? In 1991, the Congress-led government of Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao passed a series of groundbreaking reforms that unshackled the economy from its tight state controls, transforming it into a market-oriented, globalized giant. Those reforms unleashed India’s...

-The World Bank A World Bank study shows creating productive assets can help make MGNREGS cost effective New Delhi– The Indian economy has turned the corner, says the latest India Development Update of the World Bank. Aided by a supportive external environment, in particular the sharp decline in oil and commodity prices, the Indian economy has taken strong strides towards higher growth and enhanced stability. Growth has accelerated, inflation has declined, the...

-India Water Portal Bankura in West Bengal receives 1000 mm of rainfall a year, yet thousands of adivasi farmers in the area were faced with irrigation issues -- until 'happas' came to the rescue. Amulya Soren couldn’t get stable yields in the kharif (monsoon) paddy in his farm. A member of the Santhal tribe, he was the beneficiary of a surplus land redistribution programme in Hirbandh block of Bankura, West Bengal....

-Economic and Political Weekly Unlimited growth for prosperity in a fi nite planet is not possible. Ecological economists like Tim Jackson, Peter Victor, and others talk about prosperity without growth and highlight the need for greening the economy on a community scale. Using the "criteria of green economy enterprise" set by Jackson and Victor as a tool, this article looks at khadi production, India's community-level cloth production system. Sumanas Koulagi (k.sumanas@yahoo.in) is...