The National Agro Foundation is on a mission to improve yield and income, especially for small farmers. Anyone planning to improve the lot of farmers in the country would do well to begin with these wise words: “Fallowness is in one's mind and not in the soil.” This was constantly uttered by C. Subramaniam, the architect of India's agricultural policies that led to the Green Revolution. While his policies and high-yielding varieties...

A Delhi survey paints a disturbing picture Roofless childhood     * There are 51,000 street children in Delhi; 20% are girls.     * 70% are on the street despite having a home in Delhi     * 50.5% are illiterate. 87% earn a living—20% as ragpickers, 15.8% as street vendors, 15% by begging     * Over 50% have suffered verbal, physical or sexual abuse     * Fewer than 20% have ID cards or birth certificates, and...

In a stark reminder of the exploitation of street children, a new study has found that one out of every five street urchins in Delhi is a rag picker. With most adults unwilling to do the work of rummaging through the city's garbage, an overwhelming number of children have been driven to do it. About 15% children are street vendors, while 15% depend on begging for their living. With the country...

NEARLY 80 km from Pune is Ralegan Siddhi village with about 3,000 people. It would have been one among the hundreds of nondescript villages in Parner taluk of Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, had it not been for Kisan Baburao Hazare, 71, better known as Anna, or older brother, a title that was appended to his name after he made the village more than just a dot on the map. Until he was...

The Samanda community and rural development block has achieved the unique distinction of 99.97 person days per household and become the first in the state to provide 100 man days for each registered household under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). As many as 149 out of 151 village employment councils achieved the target. Samanda is near Williamnagar, the district headquarters of East Garo Hills, and is about 325km from...