Since the beginning of December last, 220 tenant farmers in the state have committed suicide or died of shock, crushed by mounting debts and loss of crops. Overall, the farmer death toll stands at a staggering 350-400. Though the fickle weather wreaked havoc, experts believe it's only partly to blame as several other factors have worked against the farming community. While economic expansion continues to bypass the farming community leaving...

Following allegations of plagiarism, top Indian science academies have come out with a new report on Bt brinjal, reiterating their earlier claim that the genetically modified (GM) crop is safe and fit for commercial release. A coalition of environmental groups had alleged that key parts of an earlier report prepared by the science academies were plagiarized from a pro-GM newsletter of the department of biotechnology, Mint reported on 27 September. Last week,...

A pair of burly hands affixes several lengths of masking tape to an open brown bag. Then the same hands are shown to belong to an officer of the Chhattisgarh police; one hand holds the bag open as the other riffles through the bag's contents. “This is what we have taken,” says a voice in Hindi. When the police leave the house of Binayak Sen, an award-winning physician and human rights...

“To make democracy function effectively, we must have inclusive growth. Microfinance has given a choice to those who were earlier excluded from the traditional institutional mode of finance. Since more than 80 per cent of Indian farmers do not get loans from such institutions, emergence of micro-finance has been beneficial to the rural poor.” Dr Amiya Sharma, executive director of the Rastriya Gramin Vikash Nidhi (RGVN) opined this at the fourth...

THE issue of foodgrain management policy has assumed renewed importance with several reports in the media of large-scale wastage and diversion from the public distribution system (PDS). In a cogently-argued paper recently, Prof Kaushik Basu, a well-known economist and the chief economic adviser in the ministry of finance, has argued for foodgrain to be released in lots of much smaller size into the market, than is presently done by the...