One man stands surrounded by the debris of agricultural distress in this country: Sharad Pawar. In his second term as Agriculture Minister, he faces the formidable task of redeeming himself by solving the farm crisis that has claimed so many lives in India

Determination of source of fecal pollution in rural water by the use of antibiotic resistance profiling is promising and the patterns of MAR in different animal populations vary according to the types and quantities of agent used.

POLA IS THE HARVEST FESTI-val in Maharashtra. On this day every August, farmers in the agricultural belts of the state bathe their buffaloes, paint their horns and parade them around their villages. As the villagers of Bhadumri (in western Vidarbha) were busy sprucing up their cattle in August 2006, 35-year-old Anil Shende, a marginal farmer, staggered out of his two-room mud hut and collapsed.

This paper traces the political economy of irrigation development, and the issues of regional imbalances created by the process of allocation of development resources based on regional power bases, rather than equity or need. Irrigation development in Maharashtra is taken as a case in point.

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