From People’s Media: In January 2017, two people were killed when the police fired on villagers in Bhangar, in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district. They were protesting the forcible acquisition of their fertile agricultural land for a proposed powerg-rid substation. Read reports and watch a short film made on location, as the events unfolded….
Read More about Watch: Will Bhangar be Mamata Banerjee’s Nandigram?
Devinder Sharma writes: In the past 21 years, over 3.18 lakh farmers have committed suicide; that’s one farmer ending his life every 41 minutes. Every death on the farm infuriated the farmers, their families. But political leaders have always ignored the warning. Not realising that the day farmers wake up, Indian politics will change forever….
Read More about Only a unified Kisan identity will make politicians take notice of the agrarian crisis
From Down To Earth: About 70 per cent of India’s livestock is owned by 67 per cent of the small and marginal farmers and the landless, who shifted to livestock in face of uncertain rain and dwindling income. New restrictions on cattle slaughter will severely cripple the livestock economy which is now bigger than crop economy….
Read More about How India is killing the country’s largest economy of the poor
Protests gather pace across Narmada Valley after the Supreme Court asks the government to relocate all affected families by July 31
Narmada Bachao Andolan
Fifty-six years after the foundation stone for the Sardar-Sarovar dam on the Narmada was laid, the Gujarat government has got permission from the Centre to shut its gates. It will open the gates of misery for more than 100,000 people, whose houses and land are likely to get submerged. A Down To Earth ground report….
Read More about What Gujarat govt calls ‘historic’, could be catastrophic for 1,00,000 villagers
From Vikalp Sangam: Located in the village Vinchurni, in Maharashtra’s Satara district, the 100-acre Maganlal Gandhi Smrutivan was originally a rocky grassland, that has since been transformed into a fertile estate that now teems with various interdependent lives. Behind this makeover is the 89-year-old former ‘Bhoodan’ activist Babulal Gandhi, aka Babu Kaka, and his family….
Read More about Vinchurni: A story of rejuvenated land, water and wilderness
R. Jagannathan, Editor, Swarajya Magazine, writes: It is time for a mea culpa on demonetisation. This writer has been largely positive on the medium-to-long-term benefits of notebandi, as opposed to its short-term downsides. Now, especially after the farmer agitations for loan waivers, I believe the negative side is larger than the positive. It has failed….
Read More about Demonetisation has failed: Farmers’ anger is the final piece of evidenceFrom People’s Archive of Rural India: From farmers being shot dead in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, to those across Maharashtra out on the streets, to those from Tamil Nadu on hunger strike in New Delhi not so long ago, this has been a season of agrarian discontent. Why is this happening, which way will it go?…
Read More about P. Sainath: Why are our farmers angry?
Circle of Blue
A recent article by Tim Worstall on the Forbes website states that, in effect, India’s farmers should be allowed to go bust because that’s how economic development works. This response from Countercurrents.org traces the criminal role of neoliberal policies in undermining farmer’s independence and livelihoods to favour global agribusiness. The article has since gone viral….
Read More about Forbes Magazine’s ‘Go bust’ prescription for Indian farmers is a death warrant
A scene after violent clashes between farmers and the police at Pipliya in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh
PTI
This series of timely reports from Hindustan Times surveys the explosive situation in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur district, epicenter of the violent protests that left six farmers dead from police bullets. The lead article looks at the impact of demonetisation in creating the crisis, while another report examines the role of social media in organising farmers….
Read More about Ground Report: How demonetisation brought MP farmers onto streets
AFP
Why, please ask yourself, does the city get 24 hour electricity, schools, colleges, dispensaries, hospitals, roads, public transport, even cooking gas and the village either not at all or services that are a pale shadow of their urban selves? Why this inequality in allocation of resources, even though 68.84% of Indians live in rural areas?…
Read More about Harsh Singh Lohit: Why do farmers protest?
James Fryer/ Gear Patrol
Nitin Sethi writes: Whatever a government might do to run the economic engine of the country or its politics, it has to continuously claim that it is a win-win for both the environment and development. It will talk about its moves to set up zero-effect and zero-defect industries. We all know such an idea does not exist….
Read More about World Environment Day is now little more than a greenwashing opportunity
Vehicles set on fire by agitating farmers in Madhya Pradesh on June 7, 2017.
IndiaSpend reports: A plentiful harvest in 2016 and imports drive some prices down 63%. A shortage of cash because of demonetisation. Despite Rs 3.5 lakh crore– invested over six decades to 2011, more than half of all farms depend on rains. These are the three factors agitating India’s 90 million families who depend on farming….
Read More about Why a bountiful harvest drove farmers to despair and anger
Enough! Farmers have been at the receiving end for far too long.
The Tribune
From The Tribune: Two developments seemed to have triggered the current protest. On the one hand, bumper crops have led to crashing down of crop prices for the farmer. On the other hand, the crop loan waiver announced by the newly elected BJP government in UP has reminded the famers of their long unfulfilled demand….
Read More about It’s a farmers’ movement in Maharashtra, not a strike
Former Union Cabinet-Secretary T.S.R. Subramanian writes: The promises of higher yield and lower pesticide usage which induced many, including myself as the then Textile Secretary, to welcome Bt cotton have now been belied… The main advantage now trotted out in favour of GM mustard is increased yield—there’s sufficient evidence that this claim is a myth….
Read More about T.S.R. Subramanian: Say no to GM mustardKen-Betwa river-linking project, if realised, will destroy livelihoods and ecology, including a portion of the Panna Tiger Reserve. Curiously enough, ground reports show that farmers in the project area are themselves not keen on it. Also included is a documentary, ‘Links of a Broken Chain’, as well as a detailed technical analysis of the project….
Read More about How the disastrous Ken-Betwa link project endangers India’s tigers, rivers and mountains
U. Subbaraju with his students from Timbaktu Collective
P.V. Sivakumar/The Hindu
Ajit Ranade writes: Mahatma Gandhi famously said that the world has enough for everybody’s need, but not for everybody’s greed. U. Subbaraju, a person who actually lived this principle in his own quiet life, who always carried a gentle smile and a helping hand, passed away earlier this month. He was just 50 years old….
Read More about Obituary: U. Subbaraju – A life lived from first principles
The Bishnois may be considered as India’s first environmentalists. The famous ‘Chipko Movement’ was inspired by the true story of Amrita Devi Bishnoi, who refused to let the king’s men cut trees in her village. Her head was severed. More than 300 people who did the same were killed for trying to protect the trees….
Read More about The Bishnois, India’s original environmentalists, who inspired the Chipko movement
A mega power plant would have eliminated Vilambur's strong local economy that includes charcoal producers
Dhruv Malhotra © Wilson
Keith Schneider writes: It is almost impossible for a single place to embody the full array of emerging factors around climate, carbon, water, finance, culture and cleaner technology that have utterly changed how India and the world view the value and risks of coal. But if such a place exists, it’s Vilambur in Tamil Nadu….
Read More about Ground Report: India’s slow but sure shift away from coal
Lalitha Gowda with her children Sharad and Bharathi, victims of endosulfan poisoning
Aparna Pallavi / CSE
Hundreds of Endosulfan-affected people, this time from Karnataka, are threatening to sit on a fast until death from May 27 to demand better care from the government. Here are exhaustive reports from Down to Earth magazine, which first exposed the issue in 2001, chronicling one of the worst and longest-running pesticide poisoning episodes in history….
Read More about Spotlight: The continuing trauma of the endosulfan victims
A view of Suman Sangam, the organic farm that will host Ecologise Camp 5
This is a weekend Orientation Camp organised by the Ecologise Network. It is a part of a programme through which those living in cities can explore living in an ecologically more sensitive and sustainable manner. The camp also aims to expose participants to the current world crisis of global warming, resource depletion and growing inequality….
Read More about Announcing Ecologise Camp 5 at Dharwad, Karnataka
