New poverty estimate scrapped

ARGUABLY, India does not have a poverty estimate. It faces a tough question: how to measure poverty. Confusion erupts as multiple expert groups and organisations are working on a new methodology to measure poverty.

Letters - March 31, 2012

Science restricted

Letters - March 15, 2012

Puranas as sci-fi

Burdened with bumper crop

Uttam Majumdar is unable to sell his 330,000 kg of paddy. He is under pressure from moneylenders from whom he had borrowed over `1 lakh at an interest rate of 60% a year (Photo: Sayantan Bera) LONG known as farmer friendly, West Bengal is now making headlines for farmers’ suicides. Reportedly 31 farmers, including landless farm labourers and small traders of agriculture produce, in the state took their lives between October last year and January.

Letters - February 15, 2012

A farmer’s take

Maize Mania

In the lush forested uplands of Koraput, Domu Matpadia, a Paraja tribeswoman, is coming face to face with modern farm technology. A representative of Charoen Pokphand, a Thai agribusiness multinational, is telling her how to grow its hybrid maize seeds that the state government has given her free along with a kit of fertiliser and pesticide. The seeds that she cradles in her palm with wonder are the key to a plan that Odisha has drawn up to get its farmers to give up their traditional rice cultivation in the uplands and take to hybrid maize instead to boost income.

Unravelling the food mess

Across Navargaon village in Korchi tehsil of Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district one can see wheat spread out to sun on cots outside every home. The wheat is worm infested and Bhimabai Katenge, one of the residents, holds up a handful to show that the grains are nearly hollow. “This is the grain we have received after two months. When we asked the ration shop dealer about the last two months’ supply, he said it has lapsed.”

High cost of fodder led milk price hike

Birmashri Rathore knows exactly how much water to add to milk so that it can still be accepted as milk.

Low Pulse

Surendra Nath has switched to eating grass-pea, though he knows it is not good for health. But so is tobacco, he argues. He cannot do without pulses and pigeon-pea selling at Rs 100 a kg is beyond his means. The 45-year-old electrician-cum-security-in-charge at a housing society in  

Don't need subsidies, give us the right price

For most Indians, Mahendra Singh Tikait is the man who brought Delhi to its knees in 1988 with a rally that brought the national capital face to face with the agrarian reality. While others who relied on his support went on to positions like cabinet minsters and opted for comfortable alliances with agribusiness companies, Tikait remained a farmer leader. In a three-hour interview, he spoke of India's agrarian crisis and its underlying causes.