Laporia, some 80 km from Jaipur, is a raucous village. The cacophony of the chirp is loudest in the mornings and evenings, when the birds wake or return to roost. Even the silent nights are not spared, punctuated by the screeching of owls. Laxman Singh, the man who has transformed the semiarid village on the [...]

The argument in favour of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multibrand retail goes something like this: by eliminating rapacious middlemen, multinational participation in the retail sector will ensure a good deal for producers (particularly farmers) and consumers, besides creating jobs. It will enable massive investment in storage and processing infrastructure, economies of scale, prosperity at [...]

In the small village of Soppanhalli, in Ariskere taluk of Hassan district in Karnataka, Rame Gowda, a small farmer with five acres of land, surveys his half-acre gherkin crop. The crop is doing well, helped by the agri team of the gherkin-processing company, which has entered into a contract farming arrangement with him. The team [...]

There can be no leap-frogging of the Indian economy into the league of the world’s fast-growing nations unless Indian agriculture becomes a part of the growth. The key to satisfactory growth in Indian agriculture now lies more in improving productivity than in increasing acreage or irrigation cover of arable land. While efforts are required for [...]

A stroll along the Leh market in July August, the tourist season in the cold desert region of Ladakh, reveals several colours of this landscape that is otherwise blanketed by snow. The most prominent one is orange; the colour of the fresh apricot piles lining one side of the road. Women farmers from Saspol, Nimmo, [...]

After a long history of widespread malnutrition and starvation for many, the people of the India will have, for the first time, the Constitutional right to  food. Yet, not all will have that right. As of now, 75 per cent of rural and 50 per cent of urban population will have the right to a [...]

The National Food Security Act (NFSA) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) have provided a major shift in alleviating poverty strategy. Nevertheless, the poverty status of the country is alarming. Even with the growth rate at 8.5 per cent, poverty and consequent malnutrition makes for 37 per cent (some data states [...]

Dr Abhijit Sen is Member, Planning Commission of India. He is a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge (currently on leave as Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University) and has also taught at the Universities of Sussex, Oxford and Cambridge. Besides serving various think tanks in the states and at the [...]

The spectre of economy slipping back to the Hindu rate of growth over the long term is looming large over New Delhi’s Raisina Hills that houses the North Block, the place where the Budget for 2012-13 is in the works.  The investment climate for manufacturing, mining and service sector has turned bleak because of such [...]

“Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.” – J. Paul Getty   The New Year is a good time as any to begin with a conundrum. The Constitution of India lays great emphasis on the Indian villages, on agriculture, the village panchayats on the farming industry and animal husbandry. [...]