When many households spend less than Rs.225 a month per person, you really need to think of how people live. On what it is that they live. What can you spend on if the most you can spend is, on average, Rs.8 a day? And if close to 80 per cent of what you spend is on food, clothing and footwear, what else could you possibly buy, asks P Sainath.

This time three years ago, there were around 300 cotton procurement centres at work in Maharashtra. This year that number is 56. The farmers are being pushed towards private traders. And much lower prices, writes P Sainath.

The agrarian crisis has seen over a lakh of women farmers lose their husbands. But survivors like Kalavati Bandurkar - with seven daughters - still run their farms, writes P Sainath.

Several women in Karnataka's Mandya district like Jayalakshmamma, whose husband committed suicide four years ago, still stand up to the unending pressure with incredible resilience, writes P Sainath.

The state has witnessed 30,000 farm suicides in a decade. Vidarbha is the worst place in the nation to be a farmer, writes P Sainath.

While the number of farm suicides kept increasing, the number of farmers has fallen since 2001, with countless thousands abandoning agriculture in distress, writes P Sainath.

Close to 150,000 Indian farmers committed suicide in nine years from 1997 to 2005, official data show. While farm suicides have occurred in many States, nearly two thirds of these deaths are concentrated in five States, writes P Sainath.

Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh have together seen 89,362 farmers' suicides between 1997 and 2005. On average, one farmer took his or her life every 53 minutes between 1997 and 2005 in just these states, writes P Sainath.

The broad trends of the past decade seem unshaken. Farmer suicides in the country since 1997 now total 182,936, but the real causes behind this devastation remain unaddressed, reports P Sainath.

The share of the 'suicide belt' - Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh - remains very high; these states account for two-thirds of the total farm suicides in the country. P Sainath reports.

In 2006-08, Maharashtra saw 12, 493 farm suicides. That is 85 per cent higher than the 6,745 suicides it recorded during 1997-1999. And the worst three-year period for any State, any time. P Sainath reports.

Maybe the pro-farmer claim was a typing error. This is a budget crafted for, and perhaps by, the corporate farmer and agribusiness, writes P Sainath.

There is indeed a vital link between paid news and private treaties. One is in the political sphere. And, second, in the sphere of business and commerce, writes P Sainath.

It's bad enough that you can pay bribes to officials who are very willing to take them; bad enough that ill-gotten gains are nearly a birthright today; bad enough that values are to laugh at. But corruption is about more than these. Corruption breaks down the very rules we live by. Dilip D'Souza remembers his court appearances.

Suman Sahai discusses India's progressive legislation in the area of patents and protection for plant varieties.

It is 23 years since the Indira Sagar project was cleared and 17 for the Omkareshwar dam, but in neither case is there a rehabilitation plan in place. The construction, however, continues. Kanchi Kohli reports.

The struggle to feed themselves and their families round the year drives millions of farmers in India to desperate measures. Abhijit Mohanty’s story shows how sustainable agriculture has helped transform the lives of farmers in Odisha’s backward Kalahandi district.

Acknowledgement of the declining utility of military force in a nuclear environment may hold a peace dividend that includes Kashmir says Firdaus Ahmed

The army may have delivered on its mandate of ensuring the return of an environment more conducive to law and order since more than a decade, in Kashmir. But the recent spate of suicides and fratricides within are showing that the army is under stress, a slide that the political side can and must prevent, says Firdaus Ahmed.

India claims that with the recent nuclear cooperation deal it has inked with the US, the global order has been changed. And it is right. It has upset the non-proliferation regime and re-configured forces, possibly leading to a renewed arms race, writes Sandeep Pandey.

Women of a small village in Uttar Pradesh are weaving not just colorful yarn but also communal harmony in their region. Swapna Majumdar reports.

With the closure of the dance bars, the sex industry has another arm. Thousands of women without education have lost their livelihood. They have to cash in on their looks before the passage of time wrinkles it. Excerpts from Rajendar Menen's book.

Tamilnadu leads the country in nutritional interventions and yet has alarming levels of hunger in children. Research indicates that is a very likely cause of poor schooling achievement and drop-out rates, reports Krithika Ramalingam.

NGOs have fared better than the government in tackling iron deficiency in poor children. Activists, policy analysts and funders want a convergence of various departments as opposed to boxing nutrition into the health-sector alone. Krithika Ramalingam completes her two-part inquiry.

On G S Gidde Gowda's farm outside Hassan, the theories of conventional farming take a backseat, while he applies a systematic preference for nature's own hand.

Two farmers from Chamarajanagar, Karnataka, took the state government to court for not giving them water for the past three-four years. The twist is that they approached a district consumer court, and won the case in less than a year. Veena N reports.

There seems to be a steady increase in the acceptance of Bt cotton by Karnataka farmers. And, after experiencing the disastrous consequences of spurious seeds, farmers are particular about buying only from authorised sources. But disturbing and worrisome trends remain, reports Keya Acharya.

This 58-year-old illiterate farm labourer has developed irrigated farming at a hilltop in the Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka. His hard work, vision and never-say-die attitude have turned the land around and he now advises visiting farmers. Shree Padre reports.

"Trying to measure the success of water harvesting only with increased water level is not fair. The vegetation improves, so does the soil moisture.” Shree Padre reports on an arecanut farming family's success.

Why does meaningful resettlement for Narmada dam oustees in Maharashtra remain slow despite a state cabinet show of willingness in January 2004? An India Together report.

Much debate over the massive dam projects on the Narmada has been on costs vs benefits as well as poor rehabilitation measures. But one of the original questions activists raised years ago was over the Right to Information. The 'RTI' factor may be finally hitting home, reports Jaideep Hardikar.

The Maharashtra State Cotton Growers’ Marketing Federation was originally setup to procure cotton from growers at reasonable prices and sell it to mills and traders. Instead, with government policies not helping, it has trapped itself and farmers in a vicious cycle of debt and losses, reports Jaideep Hardikar.

Last year saw Maharashtra go to the polls and the incumbent government offer freebies to farmers. But cotton growers in Vidarbha saw their problems only worsen as they entered 2005. None of the political parties seem interested in a real way out, finds Jaideep Hardikar.

Thousands of cotton farmers in Maharashtra are due money from the state's procurement agency -- the marketing federation -- for the 2004-5 season. Though officials maintain that they have released payments, farmers are not getting money from the banks. Jaideep Hardikar reports.

The Ganesh festival is the most important event in Maharashtra. This season, farm distress has hit the utsav badly in Vidharbha. Very few have money to spend. Meanwhile, farmers' suicides there are going up. There has been one almost every 36 hours this year. P Sainath continues his series on the region's crisis.

"In the time of crisis, when no helping hand is coming forward to rescue us, we have to manage ourselves," says Bhagwat Jadhav, a resident of Bondgavhan village in Vidarbha. His neighour, cotton farmer Ramesh Rathod committed suicide recently. "It could be our turn tomorrow," says a worried Jadhav. Jaideep Hardikar reports.

More and more land in Vidarbha has come under women's cultivation, but pressures of culture and family economics are still strongly against their title to land itself. But increasingly, women are coming out to assert their rights, reports Aparna Pallavi.

As the fresh sowing season starts, beleaguered cotton farmers, already steeped in debt, are being forced to opt for the more-expensive Bt (genetically modified) cotton. Inputs dealers in Vidarbha say that there is hardly any non-Bt hybrid variety available in the market this year. Jaideep Hardikar reports.

The Maharashtra government claims that a huge transformation is taking place in Vidarbha; the milk collection has risen 37 per cent. Distressed farmers, who were given the 'princely' cows as relief, feel otherwise. Jaideep Hardikar does a reality check.

In Vidarbha, widowed women farmers have been hit hard by lack of viable farm credit. Quite a lot of women find themselves unable to carry out farm work in the absence of credit. Caught between fear and despair, their options are limited. Aparna Pallavi reports.

Rising health costs are proving disastrous for Vidarbha's farmers already under severe distress. Debt due to spiraling medical expenditures is worse than the illness itself for many, and the state government's health infrastructure is not helping, reports Jaideep Hardikar.

Pune-based firm Neeti Solutions has designed a unique version of the popular game Snakes and Ladders, aimed at teaching children about fires and earthquakes and how to cope best in such situations. Rasika Dhavse has more.

Land acquisition from Vidarbha farmers for irrigation projects is become a case of cure worse than the disease. The new projects are being commissioned over the prime minister's relief package. Jaideep Hardikar digs deeper.

Reuters Market Light, a professional content service, has been changing the way Vidarbha farmers make decisions on sowing, selling farm produce, and other important matters and increase their profits. Jaideep Hardikar reports.

Small rain-fed farms are crucial to agriculture turning around. Will India tackle this structural problem? Jaideep Hardikar has more.

Golfers will be okay with slashed prize money: Shubhankar Sharma

Many Indians still go “awww” when a US secretary of state endorses — in Hindi — PM Narendra Modi’s alliterative catchphrases, in this case, “sabka saath, sabka vikas”.

The Jharkhand government on Friday banned the manufacturing, sale and storage of 11 prominent brands of pan masala for a year after it found they contained magnesium carbonate, which is harmful for the heart and can cause various diseases. The state had tested these products for three months.

Locking up healthy people in their homes and putting wholesale populations under house arrest is perverse. Coronavirus panic merchants and fearmongers have wrecked entire economies based on flimsy evidence and with little public scrutiny. Lockdowns...