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Pulling Indian Farmers Out of Poverty
This is the official entry of Akhila Vijayaraghavan for the Rio Blogger Prize. The winner of the prize gets to go to Rio to cover the climate talks in June. If you like what you read, please support her and like, share, comment and tweet the original on TckTckTck's website.
One of the biggest deterrents to achieving a sustainable future is poverty. Therefore, alleviating poverty is the best way to reach balanced economic growth and social development without environmental degradation.
Farmers in India need help to get out of poverty
In India, poverty is one of the largest reasons for social problems. As a largely agrarian economy, the country is as vulnerable to climate change like any island nation. A study by Purdue University concluded that changes in the weather patterns have direct implications on the monsoons.
Farmers depend on the monsoon rains from June to September to irrigate their crops, and bad rains means a failed crop which has economic implications. India’s farmers have the highest rates of suicides, especially following a bad monsoon.
During the fallow seasons, farmers often migrate into cities looking for work. Since the entire family moves, children’s education is frequently interrupted, keeping them in a loop of poverty.
Read the complete article here here.
Akhila is the Founding Director of GreenDen Consultancy which is dedicated to offering business analysis, reporting and marketing solutions powered by sustainability and social responsibility. Based in the US, Europe, and India, the GreenDen's consultants share the best practices and innovation from around the globe to achieve real results. She has previously written about CSR and ethical consumption for Justmeans and hopes to put a fresh spin on things for this column. As an IEMA certified CSR practitioner, she hopes to highlight a new way of doing business. She believes that consumers have the immense power to change 'business as usual' through their choices. She is a Graduate in Molecular Biology from the University of Glasgow, UK and in Environmental Management and Law. In her free-time she is a voracious reader and enjoys photography, yoga, travelling and the great outdoors. She can be contacted via Twitter @aksvi and also http://www.thegreenden.net
