Experts give them a miss

farmers do not disappear when they are not making news by protesting support prices or committing suicides (see Sweet victory)

Harvesting troubles

This year the wheat harvesting season witnessed the growing trend towards the use of combine harvesters. This machine combines the tasks of harvesting, threshing, and cleaning of grain. Till a decade ago, most of the wheat crop was harvested manually, mostly by landless or near-landless farm workers from the same or neighbouring villages. They were paid mostly as a share of the harvested producequite often one

POSCO looms over Republic Day

Women grow food basket

Whenever I went missing as a child, my mother would come looking for me in the pata, Lalitabai Meshram said, laughing out loud. My friends and I would play in the tangled vines for hours, making dolls of corn husk and hair, eating groundnuts, beans and waluk melon. Sometimes I would fall asleep there, recalled Meshram, now 50-plus.

Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property

whoever cheats and thereby dishonestly induces the person deceived to deliver any property to any person, or to make, alter or destroy the whole or any part of a valuable security, or anything which is signed or sealed, and which is capable of being converted into a valuable security, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine. -Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 Dishonesty hit the atmosphere

After SEZs, nuclear power parks

mango orchards in Gujarats Bhavnagar district and paddy fields in Andhra Pradeshs Srikakulam district will disappear under nuclear power parks that will have eight power plants each. The government approved the projects in the last week of September. The US India Business Council (usibc), a trade group from Washington that lobbied hard for the sites, is upbeat.

US not keen to trade freely

IN JULY 2008, when the Doha talks to liberalize trade among member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) broke down, the US blamed India. This year, when India tried to revive the talks at a two-day informal meet of ministers from 30 countries in Delhi, the US did not seem keen to clinch the agreement. The two-day mini-Doha meeting was held on September 3-4. At the end of the meeting Indian commerce minister Anand Sharma said all member countries have agreed to

NREGS expansion

To include private land of small farmers, freezing wages the rural development ministry recently issued a notification expanding the scope of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (nregs) to allow asset creation on private land of small and marginal farmers. The work, the notification said, will include "irrigation facility, horticulture plantation and land development facilities". As of now, there is provision to include work

Onus on industry

Chhattisgarh asks business houses to acquire own land the Chhattisgarh government is planning to allow new industries in the state provided companies acquire land on their own from farmers. Executive director of the Chhattisgarh State Industrial Development Corporation, Avinash Bhatnagar, said over a dozen investors including the gmr group are awaiting land allotments for the past several months but existing industrial areas are saturated. The

Diminishing returns

Wilted crops dot the countryside; farmers cry for water, electricity "August is the time when we have at least 3.5 feet (one metre) tall bajra, but this year the land looks as barren as nothing has ever been sown here," said Mewa Singh. "It drizzled just once in July. I have never seen this in 50 years of my life."