HAS GREEN REVOLUTION FAILED INDIA'S POOR? Green Revolution Vs Rain-fed Farming OVERVIEW: Of late India’s fabled Green Revolution has come under severe attack. Many development thinkers believe that it has unfairly skewed India’s agriculture policy in favour of the farmers whose land is already or potentially covered under irrigation. The basic criticism is that the Green Revolution has been largely irrelevant for India’s 60 per cent cultivable land which is un-irrigated. These...

The recently enacted Right to Education Act, 2009 has extensively been debated in the media, civil society and academic palaver. Mainstream also intervened in the debate, and to the best of my recollection, published two pieces: first, a rather elaborate one by Muchkund Dubey on September 19, 2009, and thereafter by N.A. Karim on October 3, 2009. While entirely endorsing the views expressed in these two articles and sharing the...

A simple and strictly local power generation system has proved that rural Indian communities are willing and able to pay for reliable electricity.  Some seven years ago, two young men, chums from their days at boarding school, chatted over the Internet about what they might do for villages in their home state of Bihar. The company they went on to create has begun establishing small power plants driven by gases...

Only a process of reverse migration based on the Gandhian model can save India’s cities, and also rural India.  A report prepared by the United Nations Development Programme reveals that in India’s big cities more than 40 per cent of the people live in slums. Some of them have reasonable levels of income, but cannot afford other housing. For many reasons including the population load, slums are unhygienic. It is...

This newspaper recently hosted its annual debate on whether a resurgent Bengal was an impossible dream. Not surprisingly, the verdict of the 600-odd listeners went against the motion. This has as much to do with tangible societal gains as with an enveloping sense of crisis which embeds enormous opportunities. The glorious past of Bengal needs no persuasion. It was integrated with the rest of the world through trade and interchange...