-The Hindu Alleviating poverty in India requires not only cash transfers but also other enabling changes Advocates of unconditional cash transfers claim that they can be both emancipatory and transformative. They argue that people are quite capable of making rational decisions. And that this kind of basic income support can improve their lives. I have no quarrel with the claim that we must trust the poor. Such suspicion is part of an elite...

-The Hindu Natural farmer Subhash Palekar says it has led to the destruction of environment and fall in productivity Andhra Pradesh: While the world praises Nobel laureate and father of the Green Revolution Norman Borlaug as the saviour of humanity, Subhash Palekar, zero-budget natural farmer, calls him a ‘fraud'. Mr. Palekar says that Green Revolution is not a revolution at all. ‘It has destroyed soil, water, air, environment, vegetation and finally human...

-The Pioneer Earlier, due to poor electricity supply in Jharkhand, farmers were unable to store vegetables, thereby incurring losses. Now, with the introduction of ‘desi fridges' that do not require external energy, they can get themselves a better deal, writes Aakriti Shrivastava Sanjay Singh, a smallholder farmer is market savvy. He claims to produce the best quality vegetables in his village, Madanpur, in Jharkhand. He sells his vegetables in a nearby...

-IndiaSpend.com "Worldwide, inequality of individual wealth is extreme. At the start of 2014, Oxfam calculated that the richest 85 people on the planet owned as much as the poorest half of humanity. Between March 2013 and March 2014, these 85 people grew $668 million richer each day." That is the observation by Oxfam India, an NGO that works on issues relating to poverty and development, in its latest report on inequality...

-Down to Earth The programme does not address challenges that farmers face in eastern states Farmers in Jharkhand have not derived significant benefits from the new Green Revolution programme initiated by the Centre in 2010-11, according to a report by non-profits working with the farmers in the state. The report claims that the government tried to implement the 1960s model of Green Revolution that increased agricultural production in Punjab and Haryana, without...