Agriculture & Rural Development

India is seeking to double the incomes of its farmers by 2022. Food sovereignty is an important measure to meet this target. What is Food Sovereignty? Food Sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture...

Airtel Business and IBM have collaborated to deploy a hybrid cloud solution for a group of Milk Producer Companies (MPCs) created by NDDB Dairy Services. The hybrid cloud solution that leverages Airtel Cloud and IBM Power servers, will host the ERP and other key applications to accelerate the digital transformation of the MPCs. These...

The Covid-19 pandemic necessitated a swift move to digital-focused business strategies and transactions due to safety, business discovery, marketing and logistical considerations. Even the informal and micro business segments, that traditionally relied on manual and face-to-face transactions, had to adapt to survive in one of the most arduous times in recent history. However, what...

The Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Rameswar Teli in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha on Monday informed that Public Sector Oil Companies (PSUs) have been earmarking 2% of their average Net Profits made during the three immediately preceding financial years as per Section 135 of the...

Snigdha Parupudi was born and raised in Canada, then transplanted into a small town in south India. She is a gold medallist from Madras University and has experience working in the social sector. Her work has been published in Parabola, National Geographic Traveller, Open, The Indian Express, and The Hindu BusinessLine. Her book, A Silent...

Tata Coffee Limited (TCL) recently won the ‘Sustainable Agriculture Award’ at the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) Agriculture Summit and Awards 2021. The company was recognized for its Soil and Water Conservation initiatives undertaken at its plantations and instant coffee plants. Kiran Ganapathy (Head of Plantations - Operations) and Samir Palsule...

Britannia Industries’ Dairy Farmer Welfare programme is enabling farmers in Maharashtra improve their economic status through increased cattle productivity and incomes. The Dairy Farmer Welfare programme was conceived with the objective of inculcating sustainable agricultural practices in line with the Government’s National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture to make agriculture more productive, remunerative and climate-resilient. The...

WOTR, a Pune-based development organisation dedicated to poverty eradication through sustainable ecosystem based adaptation, and IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, along with other partners have launched the ECOBARI (Ecosystem-Based Adaptation for Resilient Income) collaborative. The new initiative is aimed at helping marginalized communities to increase their income while conserving local biodiversity, restoring, and managing...

Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic and CSR arm of Infosys inaugurated three infrastructure development projects in Mysuru, Karnataka. The Foundation has supported the rejuvenation of the Hebbal Lake and Sewage Treatment Plant construction at a cost of Rs. 107 Crore, and the building of the Gorilla Enclosures I and II at the Sri Chamarajendra Zoological...

Call for Code founding partner IBM and its creator, David Clark Cause, announced the winner of the fourth annual Call for Code Global Challenge. The top prize this year went to Saaf Water, an accessible water quality sensor and analytics platform created, in particular, for people living in rural localities. In Bihar, nine members of...

Continental India initiated a large-scale sustainable water conservation project at Anekal Taluk, Bengaluru, as part of its ongoing integrated rural development programme. The water conservation projects include the construction of a mini reservoir, four check dams and 500 water absorption trenches at the Pearl Valley catchment area in Anekal Taluk. The project envisages the conservation...

In March 2020, when the lockdown was announced in India, millions of migrant workers, including women, most of whom were part of the informal workforce, were left stranded with no food or shelter. A year later – during the second wave of the COVID-19, the most vulnerable informal workers suffered the repercussions of the...