Climate change is springing an unpleasant surprise on agriculture in India, catching both farmers and governments unprepared. The erratic and deficit rainfall pattern and rise in temperature in recent years has even forced farmers to change cropping patterns and several areas have been declared drought-hit.Agricultural scientists acknowledge that even a mere one degree increase in average day temperature would adversely impact production of both wheat and rice crops (total annual...

By marrying traditional wisdom with scientific knowledge, India needs to create dynamic, location-specific content, and build the capacities of local people to make meaningful use of communication technologies for rural development, M.S. Swaminathan, chairperson the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), said here on Saturday. He was speaking at the ‘7th Convention of the Grameen Gyan Abhiyan – Rural Knowledge Movement' on Information Communication Technology (ICT) and Food, Health and Livelihood Security...

Unique features of the public wage programme turn it into a magnet for women More women than men work under the national programme that guarantees employment to rural people. In the current fiscal till October, women availed of more than 50 per cent of employment created under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Their participation has been growing since the inception of the Act in 2006. This is...

A meticulous study of the agrarian relations in three villages. ONE of our senior sociologists once drew my attention to the distinction between economics and other social sciences. Other social sciences – sociology and anthropology, for instance – he said, pay a great deal of attention to gathering primary data and interpreting them, whereas economics relies on secondary data for its analysis. This is, to a large extent, a fair...

While the National Advisory Council (NAC), Planning Commission and the Prime Minister Office are grappling over the proposed National Food Security Bill, the government has been steadily increasing allocation under the Targetted Public Distribution System (TPDS) during last many years. According to Siraj Hussain, chairman and managing director, Food Corporation of India (FCI), with the rise in procurement of wheat and rice by the corporation during last few years, more and...