A deformed existence

GANDHAR KARMAKAR is nine years old. He has only one eye, and suffers from paralysis. Elder to him by three years is Motiram. He suffers from osteoporosis (general bone damage). Dunia Uraon, also just short of his teens, is another unfortunate adolescent. His mother suffered three miscarriages before

With help from worms

It came to them as a small business proposal. About 10,000 farmers in the semi-arid Shekhawati region on the edge of Thar desert turned it into a fortune spinner and have become major organic farmers in Rajasthan.

Letters

MANAS SHOWS SIGNS OF RECOVERY

Costly silence

Goats give good returns only as long as fodder is free. Unlike cattle that are fed crop and crop residue, goats and sheep graze in wasteland, common grazing land and forests. In western Rajasthan, where degrading farm land and feed shortage forced people to abandon farming and cattle and turn to goats, pressure on grazing areas is showing.

Endangered in Sariska

THE DEATH of a tiger last month, two and a half years after it was brought to Sariska, proves the National Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan is not safe for the big cat. The death also brought to light little action has been taken on the recommendations of the Tiger Task Force, set up in 2005 to look at tiger conservation in the country. That was the year when Sariska lost all its tigers.

Letters

THE STALK EXPERIENCE

Promised land turns arid

PEOPLE displaced by the Pong dam are still waiting to be rehabilitated, forty years after the dam was built. They were promised canal-irrigated land in Ganganagar district, but the Rajasthan government is now offering them semiarid land in Bikaner. The dam in Himachal Pradesh supplies water to Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

Plantation mirage

THE Great Indian Desert, Thar, is expanding, swallowing and degrading about 12,000 hectares of productive land every year.

Letters

Clay balm for Pushkar

Upturned harvest

Afrequent traveller to rural parts of northern India will find something odd about the roadside sights on a ride from Jaipur to Jobner, especially during late March.