agriculture

Ajay Gopi greets you with a shy, heart-warming smile. As is usual, the now twenty-year-old is accompanied by his camera – photography is one of his greatest passions. As he happily chats away, one is hardly likely to suspect that he is quietly working to revolutionise Indian farming systems. In fact, Ajay is the founder of “Hands on Agriculture”, which aims to establish aquaponics as a less water-dependent alternative to conventional farming. His journey began with countering his parents’ explicit will. Ajay recounts that his father wanted to make him an electrician, but he had other ideas. “My wish was…

A solidarity meeting was held at the Institute of Agricultural Technologists on Queen’s Road on 13th November 2016 for farmers across Karnataka who are suffering from acute drought in the last two years. This meeting is part of an effort to engage those who influence public opinion, such as writers, academics, journalists and any other professional in towns/cities to the farmers’ struggle as part of the ‘Bengaluru stands with the farmers in distress’ campaign. Chukki Nanjunda Swamy, Dr Vasu, Geethamma, K T Gangadhar, Prakash Kalmadi and other eminent people spoke about the problems the farmers are facing and how to overcome the drought…

If there is one politician who is most qualified to present a Budget for Karnataka, it is the Chief Minister himself - Siddaramaiah. While he has shown his ability to do the fine balance with not antagonising the public with more taxes, he has played to the gallery as far as keeping multiple vote banks in good humour is concerned. What should the budget aim to do? What are the key measures that should have been dealt with differently in the budget? Creation of more jobs across agriculture, manufacturing and services sectors should be the fundamental objective for the moment.…

Every budget talks about how Bangalore is an important metropolis and how its glory as an IT-BT capital has to be restored. In keeping with the current sentiment, the budget has discussions about garbage, roads, sites and investments. However there is only so much a city can take; so much a city can absorb; a limit to which it can cope. So, the question with every budget is that why are we so Bangalore-centric? Unpack the current Karnataka budget and you have a section dedicated to Bangalore which details out fly-overs, sky-walks, grade separators and garbage management. There is an…

For Vijay Bhaskar Reddy Dinnepu, the urge to give back to his roots was unrelenting. And that's what led to the founding of his initiative KisanRajaFRESH, that delivers fresh fruit, procured directly from farmers, to homes and offices. This, he feels, will help both the cultivator of the fruit and its end consumer - the consumer will pay less than he presently does and despite this, the farmer will earn more. Fresh fruit, straight from the farmer A chemical engineer with a post graduate degree in computer science from IIT Madras, Dinnepu embarked on this enterprise as a natural extension…