The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
THE village of Behrampur Gouditikra in Orissa's Bargarh district has an uncommon distinction: all the 109 households have running water. This is the latest addition to its civic amenities, which include latrines in every house, electricity, a school and a motorable road to the highway. All this has been achieved …
THE work of Robert Chambers, an eminent rural sociologist, has influenced academics as well as field workers and NGOs. This book aims to enunciate a new work ethic commensurate with his commitment to rural development. Chambers critiques what he calls "normal" professionalism, the "thinking, values, methods and behaviour dominant in …
What did you achieve by undertaking the fast at Alandi? This is not the first time I have undertaken a fast to draw the attention of the government to the rampant corruption in the social forestry department. I had undertaken a similar fast in 1990. At that time, the government …
What is the basic concept of pani panchayats? Pani panchayats are arrangements between the farmers of a village to share water resources. There is a limit on the amount of land that can be irrigated -- 0.2 ha for an individual and 1 ha for a family. The beneficiaries should …
TWO steps forward, one step backward. That's the irritating pattern of growth I've been seeing in the past 2 decades in villages within 3 km from the motor road to Kumaon. But even this hobbled dance of development seemed to take on a progressive avatar after a 15-km trek to …
MAHATMA Gandhi dreamt of an India where villages would be independent entities, supporting themselves by harmonising human needs with local resources. Today, driven by the bogey of over-exploitation and the steady depletion of natural resources, researchers are frantically trying to find ways to realise the Mahatma's vision by making the …
IT ALL began in the early 1980s, when the village of Seed near Udaipur in Rajasthan registered itself under the Rajasthan Gamdhan Act of 1971 that gave the gram sabha full control over all the land within the village boundary, including erstwhile government land. The sabha, consisting of all adults …
A unique database on mangroves -- the Mangrove Ecosystem Information Service (MEIS) -- developed by the Centre for Research in Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (CRSARD) in Madras, will be operational by December. Work on MEIS is being headed by eminent scientist M S Swaminathan. CRSARD will also set up …
Different estimates of the extent of the country's wastelands area has forced the ministry of rural development to call for a remapping of such areas. The ministry's wasteland development department has asked the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) in Hyderabad to prepare a detailed map of the wastelands by the …
"IF TISSUE culture companies can make profits, why can't villagers?" asks C R Raju, who has developed a tissue culture technique that he claims is cheap and easily transferable to the people -- a feat research laboratories are still to achieve. Raju developed the low-cost technique as part of voluntary …
AFTER a nearly two-year break, Karnataka's pioneering panchayati raj experiment will continue in December and January, when elections will be held to village, taluka and district bodies under a new panchayati raj act. But in the run-up to the elections, the campaign to oust Karnataka chief minister M Veerappa Moily …
ABOUT 5,000 gram panchayats in Karnataka will go to the polls on December 16 this year. But some proponents of panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) argue that the 1983 framework for the operation of PRIs was far more committed to the ethos of democratic decentralisation than the 1993 act. They argue …
THE POPLAR trees that the Bareilly-based match manufacturer, Wimco, persuaded area farmers to plant is causing much heartburn. The farmers allege that Wimco, sensing a wood crisis in the 1970s because of felling restrictions in India and Nepal, tried to get land from the Uttar Pradesh forest department to raise …
The 1992 amendment to the West Bengal Panchayat Act of 1973 did two things: It empowered villagers to choose their path of development and guaranteed representation for women. Previously, gram sabhas existed only in name and the people did not have any democratic decision-making powers. Priorities -- whether electricity or …
MAY 30, 1993, was a historic day in West Bengal. For the first time, voting was held for a panchayat system that endowed villagers with the right to set their own priorities for development. And more remarkable, one-third of the panchayat seats were reserved for women. But the more things …
SONRAJ IN THE Uttar Pradesh village of Sonrai, water-starved residents eke out a living growing a single, rainfed crop of jowar or kodo (millet) on 500 sandy ha and by mining granite, phosphate or lead the rest of the time. The village averages 85 cm of rain annually, sufficient to …
THE MUCH-lauded Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY) has failed as an instrument to transform rural India. And not all the high praise from the prime minister or the government's hiking of the JRY budget or the speedy enactment of the Panchayati Raj bill, ostensibly to empower village-level institutions, can mask this …
A typical PALM exercise takes about five days and includes the following: Day 1: Introductory The focus is on understanding the history of the village, its layout and the infrastructure available. Some other exercises called "empathisers" and "equalisers" are also included. These are held in the village and include the …
WHEN VISITING a village in Tamil Nadu's Dharmapuri or Karnataka's Mysore districts, you may come across a group of about 25 adults busily laying out an intricate design on the ground, using powdered rice, coloured chalk, twigs and pebbles. The designs are not mere patterns in colour; they are diagrams …
What has gone wrong with Indian science? Does it lack a personality of its own or does it lack confidence in its personality? You ask what is wrong with Indian science. May I ask what is wrong with Indian society, our management, our priorities and what have you? Why just …
