-The Hindu VISAKHAPATNAM: DWCRA member makes strides by sellingfruit juice concentrates. Initially, she started off with just a couple of fruit juices using mango and guava pulp. A couple of decades ago, G. Bhagya Lakshmi was striving hard to make both ends meet with her husBand Raghavendra Rao’s meagre income. Today, she earns Rs.2-3 lakh a month by making homemade juice concentrates. Hailing from Bandarulanka in East Godavari district, Bhagya Lakshmi attributes the...

-The Hindu The system brought down input costs — two to four kg of seeds per acre against 30 kg needed for fertiliser-based, water-intensive farming A model evolved for applying traditional wisdom in farming has also helped in conserving indigenous paddy varieties that are under threat of extinction. The Biodiversity Rainfed Farming System, promoted by Rural Organisation for Social Education, a not-for-profit voluntary organisation, in four blocks of Pudukottai district of Tamil Nadu,...

-Livemint.com Large dairy farms are critical for the next stage of India's white revolution Nagara (Anand): Sunil Patel hardly looks like a dairy farmer in his loafers, sleek glasses and cotton trousers. As he guides me to his farm of 110 cows through the narrow lanes of Nagara, a small village around 60 km from India’s milk capital, Anand, I notice most of the houses have piped natural gas connections. Nagara, like...

-The Hindu Meerut: According to officials in the Lucknow police headquarters, over 100 people have been arrested and 25 cases filed in the last one week. Uttar Pradesh is on the boil again. In just about three weeks, there were as many as a dozen incidents of communal violence. Nine districts of the State, including urBan areas like Kanpur, Mianpuri, Kannauj, Pratapgarhm, remained tense because of communal clashes during Durga idol immersion and...

-The Hindu Business Line How the Indian State metamorphosed from protector of the poor to facilitator of the private health industry If there is correlation between two incidents of the Central Government announcing cuts in the health budget and dengue patients being refused treatment in Delhi’s private hospitals, it is rarely discussed in the ongoing media debate on the subject. A new collection of researched essays edited by public health scholar Imrana...