-i9media When tourism alone couldn't achieve the desired growth, modernisation of agriculture was adopted and thus the district of Umaria in Madhya Pradesh was able to achieve prosperity. Madhya Pradesh has been continuously drawing attention of other states because of its agricultural growth in recent years. Some of its districts, which used to have very low productivity, are now contributing significantly in the agricultural development. Umaria is one such district where agriculture...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan should have been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is not to be in this mid-year budget. Vipul Mudgal (vipulmudgal@gmail.com) heads the Inclusive Media for Change project at the Centre...

-Babushahi.com Gurdaspur: With the changing climatic conditions, water from rainfall is becoming more unreliable. It is in such a situation that the agricultural sector will have to feed more people and have very little water to spare as there is also pressure from increasing water demand from other sectors. In order to then get more crop per drop of water, There is need to adopt such techniques by which farmers can...

-The Hindu Business Line Mangalore (Karnataka): More than 900 families in Dakshina Kannada district have taken up the SRI (System of Rice Intensification) method of paddy cultivation, according to Mahaveer Ajri, Regional Director of the Shri Kshetra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project (SKDRDP), an NGO working for rural development in Karnataka. Addressing presspersons here on Tuesday, he said the method is aimed at increasing the yield. Though paddy is the main food crop,...

-Down to Earth System of Crop Intensification, specially in rice, has shown sizeable savings in water and seed usage. Yet its adoption has not spread despite incentives SIMPLE TECHNIQUES and manag-ement practices tend to be viewed with suspicion. In the age of input-intensive agriculture which calls for an array of machinery and a host of scientific props, a crop management system whose core basically is protecting the plant's roots to provide better...