-The Hindu Business Line The entire tea industry in India faces an uncertain future. And young people don’t want to work in tea gardens anymore After a steady run for nearly a decade, the tea industry is now facing tough times. Both, production of gardens in the organised sector and leaf prices are virtually stagnating. And exports no longer hold out much promise. Between January and July this year, all-India production was 553.21...

-The Indian Express We can add millions of hectares to irrigated land without building a single new dam. We just need to adopt a different method of managing the water already stored in them. One of the drivers of India’s irrigation sector has been the construction of large dams on our rivers, which Jawaharlal Nehru famously described as “the temples of modern India”. While these dams have helped increase India’s irrigated...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Indian weaver is dismissed in high places as an embarrassing anachronism, despite demand for his or her skills and products. In the new millennium, globalisation and a mindless acquiescence to imported notions of a good life threaten to take over, even as the West looks East for better concepts of sustainable living. Analysing today's crisis in the handloom sector, plagued by low-cost imitations from power looms,...

-Business Standard The govt's view is that the unions should be representatives of the workers who can negotiate with the management and raise issues concerning them The labour wing of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on Monday raised concerns over the Union government's proposal to restrict the entry of outsiders into the trade unions. "The ILO convention clearly states that it should be up to the trade unions to decide about its structures...

-The Financial Express Smart irrigation management steps, including harnessing social sector schemes for irrigation works, did the trick The spate of recent farmer suicides has once again drawn the country’s attention to the deepening agrarian crisis. Media is abuzz with opinions and expert advice on how to provide succour to the farming community. Oft-repeated among these is the demand to increase public investment in irrigation. However, we need to remember that, since 1990, public...