Feature Article

Historically, the jackfruit has always enjoyed the status of a holy tree in Sri Lanka. Named baat gasa or ‘rice tree’ it is said to have saved Lankans from hunger in a crisis. Jackfruit has social and religious connotations in Sri Lanka too. In recent years it is the economic significance of jackfruit that has grown. Since the past 10 years HORDI, funded by the International Centre for Underutilized Crops (ICUC), has trained free of cost, street vendors, housewives and entrepreneurs in minimal processing, dehydration, and bottling technologies.

Turbines can increase local temperatures. OVER the years, wind turbines have been favoured as one of the most promising renewable sources of energy. But it may come at a cost. This pollution-free and environment-friendly source of energy can cause an increase in local temperatures. Researchers from University at Albany in the US, led by Liming Zhou analysed land surface temperature data of west-central Texas between 2003 and 2011 using instruments on board NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites. The Texas region in the US has four of the world’s largest wind farms.

The Earth Summit was a historical opportunity to set the world on the correct development trajectory. Negotiators from 191 countries came together to chart a road map for sustainable development and poverty eradication. The theme was green economy. But developed and developing countries refused to bury their differences. Developed countries were not ready to let go of their extravagant lifestyle, while developing countries were expected to take on green commitments. The countries could not even reach a consensus on the definition of green economy.

After using gross domestic product, or GDP, as the universal measurement of economy for six decades, the world has begun looking beyond this gold standard for measuring a country’s economy.

A price increase and improvement in the terms of trade of agriculture after 2004-05 have revived agriculture in Uttar Pradesh. The performance, however, has varied across regions within the state and among crop groups. Price policies in favour of cereals discourage land diversification, but rising agricultural wages induce shifts in favour of high-value crops. The growth momentum has to be sustained by price reforms and by promoting a set of non-price factors that encourages resource diversification towards high-value crops.

This paper examines if the land parcels in Indian villages exhibit caste-based clustering. Using digitised cadastral maps of two villages in Uttar Pradesh and a unique data set collected by conducting a survey in these two villages, we determine the caste of the owner of each parcel. We then used spatial methods to calculate Moran's Index for caste-based clustering. In both villages, we observed a statistically significant level of clustering of land parcels based on caste groups.

In the shadow of India’s growing economy, labour bondage continues for many Sahariya labourers in Baran district, Rajasthan. Some of them, however, have rebelled against their masters and attempted to break their shackles. This article presents the findings of a recent investigation of their living conditions as well as of their struggle for freedom.

This paper examines the feminisation of labour in a rural agrarian district in Kerala beset by agrarian indebtedness and distress. Without disregarding that women in less developed and agrarian economies are mostly engaged in agriculture and related activities, the focus here is on the newfound "interest" of women in economic activities in the rural sector in a changed economic scenario.

The agriculture sector has gone through different phases of growth, embracing a wide variety of institutional interventions, and technology and policy regimes. From the late 1960s onwards, the green revolution helped the sector maintain steady growth for more than two decades. But the challenges that swept through the economy in the 1990s after the initiation of economic reforms arrested this growth. Conscious efforts have brought about a recovery of growth since the middle of the first decade of the 2000s.

If Delhi is building its way towards becoming a "global city" through mammoth infrastructure and construction projects, then what is the story of those people whose work helps put up its massive structures? The role played by women who are employed in the construction of Delhi's megastructures is even more intriguing, for they not only become workers-earners in a vast city but continue to fulfil the role of a mother-wife-householder.