-The Indian Express As many parts of the country reel under a back-to-back drought, Kavitha Iyer reports from the region that’s at the centre of the crisis. Weeks before hanging himself from a tree on his farm on June 1 this year, Kalyan Khomne, 55, read out a newspaper report to his son Shahdev. “It was about a farmer’s suicide in our taluka,” says 26-year-old Shahdev. His village, Nandurghat, and the nearby...
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Shifting Sands: How Rural Women in India Took Mining into their Own Hands -Stella Paul
-IPS News GUNTUR, India: Thirty-seven-year-old Kode Sujatha stands in front of a hut with a palm-thatched roof, surrounded by a group of men shouting angrily and jostling one another for a spot at the front of the crowd. Each of the boatmen, who carry sand mined from a nearby river to the shore every day, wants to be paid before the others. Sujatha stares hard at them, holds up a piece of paper...
More »The spectre of suicide -V Sridhar
-Frontline As rural Karnataka reels under an unprecedented wave of suicides by farmers, the State administration looks on, unwilling to address the reasons that have rendered rural livelihoods fragile. DEATH stalks rural Karnataka. In the 41 days between July 1 and August 10, as many as 245 farmers committed suicide, an average of six a day; since April 1, 284 farmers have taken their lives. As a bewildered State government gropes...
More »SGPC to take up organic farming for chemical-free ‘langar’ -Perneet Singh
-The Tribune Amritsar: To provide chemical-free ‘langar’ to the devotees visiting the Golden Temple and other historic shrines, the SGPC has decided to adopt organic farming. In the first phase of the project, 5 acres in each of the SGPC-run 35 historic gurdwaras will be covered. The SGPC is hoping that its initiative would promote organic farming in the state where the people urgently need to get rid of agricultural produce laced...
More »India's Handloom Challenge Anatomy of a Crisis -Ashoke Chatterjee
-Economic and Political Weekly The Indian weaver is dismissed in high places as an embarrassing anachronism, despite demand for his or her skills and products. In the new millennium, globalisation and a mindless acquiescence to imported notions of a good life threaten to take over, even as the West looks East for better concepts of sustainable living. Analysing today's crisis in the handloom sector, plagued by low-cost imitations from power looms,...
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