Even though the West Bengal government is yet to confirm that suicides by farmers in the Ausgram block of Bardhaman district are drought-related, following the third incident on Wednesday, district authorities admitted on Thursday that the farmers were “under a stress of debt burden.” “It is not possible to be sure whether the suicides are drought-related or not, but it is clear that the economic condition of the farmers was not...

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)’s ambitious plan of issuing a unique biometric-enabled number, innocuously called ‘aadhaar’, to every Indian resident has finally begun to generate a debate on citizen-State relations, privacy, financial implications, and operational practicalities. What the debate has largely missed so far, however, is the credibility of the UIDAI’s claims in the field of social policy, particularly the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and Public Distribution...

The Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society, JeeVika, a state-led women’s self-help group, is active since 2007. Based on primary research, this article highlights the potential role of the individual rural woman – the didi – in driving the social and economic shifts necessary for sustainable poverty reduction in rural Bihar. The term didi is used to address an elder sister. It embodies the notion of respect. Traditionally, the term has remained...

Interdependence and knowledge-sharing are keys to global food security, and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is the only legally binding treaty that promotes this, according to Xuan Li, Treaty Support Officer. Speaking to TheHindu on Monday, Ms. Xuan Li said 125 countries were signatories to the treaty that allowed access to the developments to individuals and corporations. The treaty provided access and benefit-sharing to 64 important...

Technology… the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it — Max Frisch, Swiss novelist and playwright Why do MNCs excite extreme emotions in India ? If you take any one of them from banks to pharma and chemicals to defence and aerospace, they are all clubbed together with the “usual suspects” who do more harm than good despite all the good intentions they might have had....