20 hectares of millet

At a time when the traditional cropping pattern of suicide-ravaged Vidarbha has all but disappeared under the lure of quick cash from soybean, a tiny village of 48 farming households in Maharashtra’s Wardha district decided to revive jowar millets, the local food and fodder staple.

"Salwa Judum is peaceful. We support it"

Raman Singh's second term as chief minister of Chhattisgarh started in December. On a recent visit to Delhi, he spoke to Savvy Soumya Misra on the state, his government's plans and future prospects State-run Salwa Judum Interviewee:  Raman Singh

The Dalit experts

Anthony McMichael on health risks from climate change

What are the impacts of climate change on disease outbreaks? In the past two decades, we have recorded several changes in disease outbreaks across the world. When taken together, it seems they tell us a story about the impacts of climate change. Interviewee:  Anthony Mcmichael

PDS protests in West Bengal

bithari village, Swarupnagar block, North 24-Paraganas: the men of Uttarpara hamlet in Bithari are hiding out in the fields every night despite the winter chill in the air. Better brave the cold than the police lock-up, they say. This remote village near the Bangladesh border is one of the many in West Bengal where people have protested violently against corruption in the public distribution system (pds)in the past one-and-a-half months.

PDS fails in feeding India's poor

India's Targeted Public Distribution System (tpds) gives subsidised essential commodities to economically weaker households. Till 1997, the system had supplied subsidised commodities to all

India needs to overhaul its approach towards agriculture

the circle of Green Revolution seems to be complete. Punjab's agricultural growth of 1.86 per cent last year was just a plot in a declining graph since 1970. It is clear that the farming system could not sustain itself feeding on super-intensive inputs, organically as well as financially. Such farming technology has robbed off all things natural from agricultural nature. Water table in large parts of central Punjab today is below 10 metres.

Book One Valley and A Thousand Dams, Nationalism and Development

Though the controversy over the impact of dams has taken much print space, deeper understanding of how dams entered the imagination of the entire nation from 1940 to the early 1960s, and especially after independence, has been elusive. The book under review aids our understanding of dams in particular and the development rhetoric of post-independence Indian governments in general.

Biofuel good idea, bad practice

Now that the reality of climate change has been accepted even by its strongest sceptics, there is a rush to find answers. The latest buzz is to substitute the use of greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels with biofuels--fuel processed from plants. Unfortunately, the way we are going about implementing this "good" idea could mean we are headed from the frying pan to the fire.

Monsoon-friendly Assam reeling under drought

Monsoon usually reaches Assam by June 1, and by June 5 it covers whole of northeast India. "But the disturbance in the orientation of its trough has meant that the monsoon did not reach the region at its usual time," Pathak explained. He added that deforestation and ecological disturbances also had some part in the rainfall deficiency.