-DNA Wondering about the plight of the rural population facing successive droughts which has to buy pulses, South Asia Network for Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) laments how no benefit of the price hike is reaching actual pulse farmers. While most link the current tur (pigeon pea) dal crisis with raging market prices, storage issues, hoarding and economics, a new study highlighting the making of the crisis - by South Asia Network...

-Economic and Political Weekly Farmers' unions and political parties have been demanding the implementation of the Swaminathan minimum support price (cost plus 50%) to address agrarian crisis and farmers' distress. But they have not raised demands for the implementation of the recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers, which have the potential to provide lasting solutions. Ranjit Singh Ghuman (ghumanrs@yahoo.co.uk) is a Nehru SAIL Chair Professor, Centre for Research in Rural and...

-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...

-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...

-The Hindustan Times Even with the prospects of a year of high growth and low prices, a clutch of disquieting data on the ground suggests that things are still tough, potentially testing the Narendra Modi-led government's ability to pull the economy up. Output in factories has fallen sharply and a depressing farm season this winter, along with a fall in rural wages, could prolong recovery. Simply put, the drag this time...