Declining population of camel in India is worrying
With increasing mechanisation and synthetic fertiliser usage, the camel is no longer needed for transportation, ploughing and manure
Voices of women from Dilli Chalo: We need equal rights as men farmers
A large contingent of women farmers marched along with their male counterparts at the Dilli Chalo protest on November 29-30 in Delhi.
Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana-CSE
a good scheme with flawed implementation, says CSE’s latest report
Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana - An Assessment
India is in the throes of an agrarian crisis. Indebtedness, crop failures, non-remunerative prices for crops and poor returns over cost of cultivation have led to distress in the farming sector.
We can
It is time we talked about the real cost of our food, about how to benefit the farmers who grow our food
Why I would not advocate vegetarianism
Meat eating is not the key issue, it is the amount that is consumed and the manner in which it is produced. This is where India differs.
Insure farmers to ensure future
Let’s leave for the moment the questions why these extreme weather events are happening in our world with greater frequency and intensity. Let’s discuss what we need to do
New Crop Insurance Policy is a step in the right direction but needs improvements: CSE
CSE welcomes the new crop insurance scheme but recommends further reforms to make it universal, inclusive and more effective
Stop the killing fields
This is our season of despair. This year, it would seem, the gods have been most unkind to Indian farmers. Early in the year came the weird weather events, like hailstorms and freak and untimely rains that destroyed standing crops. Nobody knew what was happening. After all, each year we witness a natural weather phenomenon called the Western Disturbance, winds that emanate from the Mediterranean and travel eastward towards India. What was new this year was the sheer “freakiness” of these disturbances, which brought extreme rain with unusual frequency and intensity.
Straw in the wind
What does the decision to save groundwater in Punjab or Haryana have to do with air pollution in Delhi? Plenty. We need to know this because many actions have unintended and deadly consequences.
Lived Anomaly: How to Enable Farmers in India to Cope with Extreme Weather Events
Lived Anomaly is about what is happening to farmers in India because of extreme weather events, largely as told by farmers themselves. Its basis is the winter–spring of 2015 and the telling aftermath. The report is also a peek into the future-what we should expect as our planet continues to heat up due to the incessant increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
Powerless and lost
The power blackout in northern India on two days should not be dismissed or misjudged. Analysts are jumping to conclude that the crisis was foretold. They blame delays caused by environment and forest clearance procedures and demand winding down the regulatory framework so that we can re-energise ourselves. Their other favourite whipping horse is ‘free’ electricity to farmers, which is said to be crippling the state electricity boards. These explanations are naïve and mistaken.
Lessons from Kakarapalli
We were standing at the edge of what looked like a swamp—grass and pools and streams. On one side was heavily barricaded land with high walls, barbed wires and armed security. A board read: East Coast Energy, Kakarapalli. This was where a bloody battle had taken place a few months ago. People protesting the takeover of their wetland were shot at and three lost their lives. Now the site of the 2,640 MW thermal power plant is under siege—locked and in court.
Endosulfan Conspiracy
It was in February 2001 that Down To Earth broke the story.
Cool stuff?
Farmers concoct pesticides out of colas
Endosulfan Conspiracy
A link was established between the unusually high incidence of deformities and diseases in Padre, a village in Kerala's Kasaragod district and endosulfan, an organochlorine pesticide.