Fractured Earth

"Here be articles on poverty, environment and development. The owner of this blog, a journalist by trade, is not very sure how india is doing. He knows that the country is growing fast, but is less sure about the kind of development this growth is translating into. He tunes into the media and gets one version of the truth. He talks to greens and NGOs and gets an entirely different version. There is great merit, he thinks, in investigating these contradictions. Trace them long enough and he will arrive at the complex, nuanced truth about how this country is faring."
- Fractured Earth

Shekhar is blogging on developmental issues and trying to investigate and keep alive issues that we, in urban and e-nabled India, tend to look over or forget easily. Over the last couple of years, I've found myself almost numb to farmer suicides and failure of crops. Changes in the price of onions has been like second page news because I don't think I can really make a difference.

Whenever we've discussed his blog (it took a long time for him to begin), the one thing that I've noticed is that Shekhar seems to really believe that by writing about these issues, he's making a difference, though he's never explicitly stated this.

Reading his blog, of late, has rekindled an interest in the state of Indian agriculture and farmers - something that we tend to take for granted. I'm not sure if I'm entirely comfortable reading about all the issues that I feel I can't do anything about - I think I'd rather be blissfully ignorant. For now though, I'm reading and being forced to think. That's not too bad.

Among other articles on Fractured Earth, do read Shekhar's SOP and his reports on the micro finance mess in Andhra and the future of MFI's.