As 30 million hectares India's cultivable land goes saline, activists demand ecological, income security for farmers

Kirankumar Vissa, Kavitha Kuruganti

By A Representative
About 13 per cent of India’s 159.7 million hectares cultivable land has gone saline over the last three decades, mainly due to the use of ecologically “unsustainable” agricultural practices promoted by India’s Central and state governments and adopted by farmers.
Revealing this, Kirankumar Vissa of the Rytha Swarajya Vedika, working in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, told CV News on the sidelines of the fourth Kisan Swaraj Sammelan, which ended on Sunday at Gujarat Vidyapeeth, yet another problem India’s agriculturists are against because of the climate change is desertification.
“In Anandpur district of Andhra Pradesh and Mehboobnagar district of Telengana, where we are working, we already witness a huge fertility soil loss because of salinity and desertification”, Vissa, who is national co-convener of the ASHA-Kisan Swaraj Alliance, said, insisting on the need to adopt ecologically sensitive policies as a way out of this grave situation. “A large number of alternatives have been worked out by farmers themselves for soil and water conservation could be adopted for policy change”, he added.
Talking with CV News, Kavitha Kuruganti, represented the Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), Bangalore, one of the organizers of the three-day seminar, pointed towards the need to provide income security to the farming community. “We discussed the issue threadbare at the seminar. We have also worked out way on how to do it. You don’t need any extra funds in state and Union budgets for this. All you need to do is to divert subsidy funds under various schemes for providing income security for the farmers”, said.
Clarifying that income security is very different from the funds made available for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Kuruganti said, this could happen by “partially diverting” Rs 70,000 crore fertilizer subsidy, Rs 35,000 crop insurance subsidy, Rs 35,000 crore as interest subsidy, and Rs 18,000 crore subsidy given during natural disasters. “Income security to farmers is being provided in some European countries. One should study these models, and work out a model for India”, she added.

Comments

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

The Vande Mataram debate and the politics of manufactured controversy

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* The recent Vande Mataram debate in Parliament was never meant to foster genuine dialogue. Each political party spoke past the other, addressing its own constituency, ensuring that clips went viral rather than contributing to meaningful deliberation. The objective was clear: to construct a Hindutva narrative ahead of the Bengal elections. Predictably, the Lok Sabha will likely expunge the opposition’s “controversial” remarks while retaining blatant inaccuracies voiced by ministers and ruling-party members. The BJP has mastered the art of inserting distortions into parliamentary records to provide them with a veneer of historical legitimacy.

Ahmedabad's Sabarmati riverfront under scrutiny after Subhash Bridge damage

By Rosamma Thomas* Large cracks have appeared on Subhash Bridge across the Sabarmati in Ahmedabad, close to the Gandhi Ashram . Built in 1973, this bridge, named after Subhash Chandra Bose , connects the eastern and western parts of the city and is located close to major commercial areas. The four-lane bridge has sidewalks for pedestrians, and is vital for access to Ashram Road , Ellis Bridge , Gandhinagar and the Sabarmati Railway Station .

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

Proposals for Babri Masjid, Ram Temple spark fears of polarisation before West Bengal polls

By A Representative A political debate has emerged in West Bengal following recent announcements about plans for new religious structures in Murshidabad district, including a proposed mosque to be named Babri Masjid and a separate announcement by a BJP leader regarding the construction of a Ram temple in another location within Behrampur.

No action yet on complaint over assault on lawyer during Tirunelveli public hearing

By A Representative A day after a detailed complaint was filed seeking disciplinary action against ten lawyers in Tirunelveli for allegedly assaulting human rights lawyer Dr. V. Suresh, no action has yet been taken by the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, according to the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).

Myanmar prepares for elections widely seen as a junta-controlled exercise

By Nava Thakuria* Trouble-torn Myanmar (also known as Burma or Brahmadesh) is preparing for three-phase national elections starting on 28 December 2025, with results expected in January 2026. Several political parties—primarily proxies of the Burmese military junta—are participating, while Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) remains banned. Observers expect a one-sided contest where junta-backed candidates are likely to dominate.

From crime to verdict: The 27-year journey that 'rewarded' the destroyers of Babri Masjid

By Shamsul Islam Thirty-three years ago, on December 6, 1992, a 16th-century mosque was reduced to rubble by a frenzied mob orchestrated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its political fronts. The demolition was not a spontaneous outburst of Hindu sentiment; it was the meticulously planned culmination of a hate campaign that branded Indian Muslims as “Babur-ki-aulad” and the Babri Masjid as a symbol of historical humiliation.

Global LNG boom 'threatens climate goals': Banks urged to end financing

By A Representative The world is on the brink of an unprecedented surge in Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) development, with 279 new projects planned globally, threatening to derail international climate goals and causing severe local impacts. This stark warning comes from a coalition of organizations—including Reclaim Finance, Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, and others—that today launched the " Exit LNG " website, a new mapping project exposing the extent of the expansion, the companies involved, and their bank financiers.

Search This Blog