According to the National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) data on loans given out by nationalised and cooperative banks, there are more farMers doing agriculture in Delhi than Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and West Bengal. The farMers in Delhi were allotted loan of Rs 22,077 crore in 2009 alone at Mere 5% rate of interest, which is the second highest after agriculture-rich Punjab. Delhi’s loan disbursal amount is bizarre,...
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Kerala won't be quite the same again by P Sainath
Women have rarely held posts of political authority in Kerala. There are, though, processes at play that could alter some things, a sense that big changes are under way. They will account for over 50 per cent of all 21, 682 wards in the 1,209 local bodies going to the polls. A single issue dogs all candidates in the local polls in Guruvayoor municipality of Kerala's Thrissur district. Any of the...
More »Ending The Kerala Model by Apoorva Shah
In 1957, the Communist Party of Kerala became the first democratically elected communist government in Asia. While many in the West feared that this election would help communism spread across South Asia and make Kerala the "Yan'an of India", the Keralite communists' actions were checked by Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress party's control of the federal coffers. Instead, from within the political bounds of India's divided government, Kerala initiated what has...
More »Food for all is food for thought
The recommendation of the National Advisory Council (NAC), that the proposed food security bill should include 75% of the population, is populist. The measure, if implemented, will entitle nearly 800 million people to some kind of subsidised food. It will drive a big hole in the budget, which finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has tried hard to rebuild after the spending excesses of 2007-09. This is not to say that the poor...
More »Shortage of migrant labour but Punjab’s own farm hands are 48% underutilised, says study by Amrita Chaudhry
Economists’ report says tractors are used for just 178 hrs a year and electric motors are overused That Punjab faces an acute labour shortage each paddy season is a known and established fact. But not many know that 48.66 per cent of the total ‘family labour’ — members of a farMer’s family — available for agriculture remains underutilised in the state. A study of the resources employed in Punjab agriculture throws up...
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