-Grain.org "We take care of the cow and the cow takes care of us," says Marayal, a farmer in Thalavady, Tamil Nadu. Her two cows produce 6 to 10 litres of milk a day, which she sells for 30-40 cents per litre. Across India, there are millions of backyard dairy farmers like Marayal. Each owning just one or two cows, these farmers supply millions more families and hundreds of thousands of informal...

-Frontline The tussle within some Central government Ministries over proposed cuts in the budget for rural development schemes has affected a promise made to senior citizens. THEIR wizened faces said it all. Though there was disappointment, there was also a glimmer of hope that their trek to the national capital would not go in vain. For almost a month, senior citizens, most of them poor, had been pouring into New Delhi from...

-Al Jazeera The Internet and mobile communication are doing the most unexpected - resurrecting hoary languages given up for lost. In the language of the Bhatu Kolhati, a remote nomadic tribe in India's western Maharashtra state, tatti means tea and gulle is meat. But, Kuldeep Musale, 30, who belongs to this tribe barely remembers his mother tongue. Well educated and having studied in boarding schools since he was six, Musale instead uses...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The current groundwater crisis in Punjab is a combination of paradoxical consequences - extreme depletion in some areas and water logging in others. This paper provides a brief description of the contours of the crisis and pinpoints possible reasons for its emergence in failures of policy as well as implementation. It also proposes a package of approaches as part of a paradigm shift for Punjab that can...

-The Times of India Shanti is a small, bird-like woman with unkempt grey hair, a wizened face and an innocent, trusting smile. The constant smile is remarkable because her life is unbelievably difficult. She lives in a mud hut in Katihar district of Bihar with her paralyzed husband. Her daughter has been married off and her son has "gone away somewhere to find work", never to return. She has no land,...