The Fall of the Rupee:Prabhat Patnaik

India Today

AT the end of the nineteenth century, Oscar Wilde in his famous play The Importance of being Earnest had talked of the precipitous fall in the value of the Indian rupee. Well over a century later alas, the Indian rupee is still falling, its latest fall as precipitous as any in Oscar Wilde’s time. On July 12, 2011, the exchange rate was 44 rupees to a US dollar; by end-June 2013, it has plummeted to 60 rupees per US dollar, a 27 percent decline in two years.

The Feminization of Farming

Photo Credit: India Program Director, Rucha Chitnis

Oliver De Schutter

ACROSS the developing world, millions of people are migrating from farms to cities in search of work. The migrants are mostly men. As a result, women are increasingly on the front lines of the fight to sustain family farms. But pervasive discrimination, gender stereotypes and women’s low social standing have frustrated these women’s rise out of poverty and hunger.