1. Sukumar Sen 2. KVK Sundaram 3. SP Sen Verma 4. Dr Nagendra Singh 5. T Swaminathan 21 March 1950

 to 19 December 1958

20 December 1958 to

 30 September 1967

1 October 1967 to

 30 September 1972

1 October 1972 to

 6 February 1973

  7 February 1973 to

 17 June 1977

6.SL Shakdhar 7. RK Trivedi 8. RVS Peri Sastri 9.Smt VS Ramadevi 10. TN Seshan18 June 1977

 to 17 June 1982

   18 June 1982 to

 31 December 1985

1 January 1986 to

 25 November 1990

26 November 1990 to

 11 December 1990

12 December 1990 to

 11 December 1996

11. Dr. MS Gill 12. Mr. J.M. Lyngdoh13. Mr. T.S. Krishna

Murthy 14. Mr. B.B. Tandon15. Mr. N.

Gopalaswami  12 December 1996

 to 13 June 2001

14 June 2001 to

 7 Feb 2004

8 Feb 2004 to

 15 May 2005

16 May 2005 to

 29 June 2006

30 June 2006 to 

20 April 2009

16. Navin B. Chawla  21 April 2009

 to 29 July 2010

Chronological list of famines in India between 1765 and 1947[1]

Year Name of famine (if any) British territory Indian kingdoms/Princely

states Mortality

1769–70 Great Bengal Famine Bihar, Northern and Central

Bengal

10 million[2] (about one third of the then population of Bengal).

[3] Disputed as excessive.[citation needed]

1782–83

Madras city and surrounding areas Kingdom of Mysore See below.

1783–84 Chalisa famine

Delhi, Western Oudh, Eastern Punjab

region,Rajputana, and Kashmir

Severe famine. Large areas were depopulated. Up to 11 million

people may have died during the years 1782–84.[4]

1791–92

Doji bara famine or Skull

famine

Hyderabad, Southern Maratha

country, Deccan,Gujarat, and Marwar

One of the most severe famines known. People died in such

numbers that they could not be cremated or buried. It is thought that

11 million people may have died during the years 1788–94.[5]

1837–38

Agra famine of 1837–38

Central Doab and trans-Jumna districts of theNorth-

Western Provinces (later Agra Province),

including Delhi and Hissar

800,000.[6]

1860–61

Upper Doab famine of 1860–61

Upper Doab of Agra; Delhi and Hissar divisions of the Punjab Eastern Rajputana 2 million.[6]

1865–67 Orissa famine of 1866

Orissa (also 1867) and Bihar; Bellary and Ganjam districts of

Madras

1 million (814,469 in Orissa, 135,676 in Bihar and 10,898 in

Ganjam)[7]

1868–70

Rajputana famine of 1869

Ajmer, Western Agra, Eastern Punjab Rajputana 1.5 million (mostly in the princely

states of Rajputana)[8]

1873–74

Bihar famine of 1873–74

Bihar An extensive relief effort was organized by

the Bengal government. There were little to none significant mortalities

during the famine.[9]

1876–78

Great Famine of 1876–78(also Southern India

famine of 1876–78)Madras and Bombay Mysore and Hyderabad

5.5 million in British territory.[6] Mortality unknown for princely

states. Total famine mortality estimates vary from 6.1 to 10.3

million.[10]

1888–89 Ganjam, Orissa and North Bihar

150,000 deaths in Ganjam. Deaths were due to starvation as famine

relief was not provided in time.[11]

1896–97

Indian famine of 1896–97

Madras, Bombay Deccan, Bengal, United Provinces,

Central Provinces

Northern and eastern Rajputana, parts of Central

India and Hyderabad5 million in British territory.[6]

1899–1900

Indian famine of 1899–1900

Bombay, Central Provinces, Berar, Ajmer

Hyderabad, Rajputana, Central India, Baroda,

Kathiawar, Cutch,

1 million (in British territories).[6] Mortality unknown for princely

states.

1905–06 Bombay Bundelkhand

235,062 in Bombay (of which 28,369 attributed to Cholera).

Mortality unknown for Bundelkhand.[12]

1943–44 Bengal famine of 1943 Bengal

1.5 million from starvation; 3.5 million including deaths from

epidemics.[12]

Cricket is recorded as having been played in India as early as 1721 - probably among sailors off a merchant ship - but the first club was not set up until 1792 with the establishment of the Calcutta Cricket Club on the site where Eden Gardens now stands, although its membership was restricted to Europeans. Five years later Bombay hosted its first match. And it was in Bombay that Indians first began to play the game. At the end of the 18th century the Parsees took on the Eton Ramblers, and in 1848 they formed the Orient Club. As equipment was scarce and expensive, they used cast-offs from the exclusive European Club, Bombay Gymkhana.

In 1877 the Parsees beat the Europeans, and flushed with success, planned tours of Australia and England. Australia fell through, but in 1878 they did visit England, winning one out of 28 games; two years later they returned, winning eight out of 31 with Mehlasa Parvi taking 170 wickets at under 12.

In 1889 an amateur English side travelled to India. They played almost exclusively European sides but their one defeat came against the Parsees, Pavri taking nine wickets. In 1892 they returned and suffered two defeats in 20 games - again losing to the Parsees. They also played an All-India side, but the reality was that was almost entirely made up of Europeans as well. In 1895 competitive cricket in India started with the first Europeans v Parsees match, a series known as the Presidency matches.

The success of Ranji in England fired the imagination, especially among his fellow princes back home. Many sent for coaches from England and lavished huge sums on ensuring that they could boast the best facilities. In 1907 the Hindus joined the Europeans and Parsees to make it a triangular competition and in 1912 the Mohammedans also started to participate. In 1937 the Christians and Jews combined to for a side called The Rest and the competition became known as the Pentangular.

While the competition was the mainstay of the cricket calendar, there was no real attempt to launch a national competition until after India's Test debut in 1932. That first match, at Lord's, came more than two decades after India's first steps to earn Test status. In 1911 and All-India side toured England under the Maharajah of Patiala - with moderate success - and by the late 1920s the performance of the side against an MCC XI led by Arthur Gilligan persuaded the ICC that they might be ready.

The one stumbling block was that India did not have a central body running the game, and so in 1928 the Board of Control for Cricket in India came into being. India were due to make their Test debut in 1930-31 but extreme nationalist sentiment and activity at the time led to the trip being cancelled and so it was at Lord's 18 months later that India joined the Test ranks.

In 1934 the BCCI launched a national competition between "the princes and the princely states" and it was named after the greatest Indian player to that time, KS Ranjitsinhji. The board also set up and inter-varsity tournament. In 1936 the first major stadium - the Brabourne in Bombay, the Lord's of India - was opened, the first of many giant arenas.

The Indian cricket team at Victoria in 1932

Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji was an Indian who played for the

English cricket team

SUICIDES BY FARMERS

India is an agrarian country with around 60% of its people depending directly or indirectly upon agriculture. Agriculture in India is often attributed as gambling with monsoons because of its almost exclusive dependency on precipitation from monsoons. The failure of these monsoons can lead to a series of droughts, lack of better prices, and exploitation of the farmers by middlemen, all of which have led to a series of suicides committed by farmers across India.[1]

Since 2001, one Indian farmer has committed suicide every half hour. Is climate change to blame?

Like most modernizing countries, India has seen a decline in the number of individuals who engage in agriculture for a living.

In the decade between 2001 and 2011,for example, the government estimates the number of Indian farmers declined by 9 million people, which marks the first absolute decline in this segment of the population since 1971. As a percentage of the total populace, farmers declined by 7 percent during the last decade, and they now constitute less than a quarter of India’s population.These numbers, in and of themselves, don’t necessarily constitute a bad trend. After all, a decline in the agrarian population could be a sign of increased productivity, or simply greater opportunities in the urban population.

Yet one harrowing sign of the state of Indian farmers is the suicide rate.

For decades Indian farmers have been committing suicide at alarming rates that are well above the rates of the population at large, which itself has been rising. Moreover, the problem does not appear to be getting any better; in fact, it is if anything worsening, despite the state’s efforts to address the problem.

One of the more authoritative studies on the subject, “Farmers' Suicides in India: Magnitudes, Trends and Spatial Patterns”, examined farmer suicides in India between the years of 1997 and 2006. According to that study, “Going by the official data, on average nearly 16,000 farmers committed suicide every year over the last decade or so. It is also clear from the table that every seventh suicide in the country was a farm suicide.”This was, the study’s author noted, if anything a drastic underestimation of the problem. That is because, according to the author, many police officers only counted someone who had committed suicide as a farmer if they owned the title to their land, which an increasing number of Indian farmers do not. Additionally, as in many cultures, many parts of India consider suicide taboo and therefore family members are likely to report the cause of death as something else.These numbers drew attention to the issue inside India, and various schemes were put in place to try to reverse the trend. Yet they appear to have had little to no success.

According to the latest census, which was taken for 2011, nationwide, farmers committed suicide at a rate of 16.3 per 100,000 farmers. This was slightly higher than the 15.7 per 100,000 farmers who had committed suicide per 100,000 in 2001.Overall, official statistics show that since 2001, one Indian farmer has committed suicide every half hour.

But the real shock comes when one compares the numbers to the Indian population at large, which has also experienced a rising suicide rate in recent years. For example, among the population writ large, an average of 11.1 Indians per 100,000 killed themselves in 2011. Thus, India’s farmers committed suicide at a rate 47 percent higher than the rest of the population. The problem has become so bad that some states stopped keeping track of the suicide rate among farmers.One of the interesting trends in India’s agricultural suicide rate is how concentrated it is among certain states in the country. Specifically, five states— Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh— account for a large (and growing) number of the suicides among farmers in the country.

Thus while the suicide rate was 16.3 among farmers nationwide in 2011, and 11.1 among the non-farming population, it was an astonishing 29.1 persons per 100,000 farmers in Maharashtra.

Overall, The Hindu   notes , the “Big 5” accounted for just over half of the number of farmer suicides in 1995, but by 2011 the “Big 5” made-up over two-thirds of the suicides among farmers in India.Poverty and debt are likely a large part of the problem. As journalist Palagummi Sainath, who has long covered the issue, notes, four of these five states are in the cotton belt region of India, and the price of cotton in real terms is a twelfth of what it was thirty years ago. Furthermore, the government removed subsidies for cotton in 1997, around the time the suicide rate among farmers began becoming apparent.Interestingly, another likely culprit in the suicide phenomena is almost certainly climate change. Three of the “Big 5” are located along India’s coast, and like many Indian farmers, rely heavily on the monsoon each year for their crops. If a drought occurs they are left without a harvest that year, despite having spent enormous amounts of money on inputs like fertilizer and seeds.

There’s anecdotal evidence to back this up. For example, The Huffington Post notes, “More than 17,368 Indian farmers reportedly   killed themselves in 2009, the worst figure for farm suicides in six years and an increase of 1,172 from the previous year's figure.” Notably, there was also a huge drought in 2009.

Throughout history, scientific and technological advances have greatly impacted the agriculture industry. By the latter part of the 19th century farmers had learned to diversify their crop production and to raise livestock for profit. Advances in farm machinery production changed the way farmers worked. They were able to cover more land at a faster pace; and as manufacturers added seats to farm machinery, farmers found some relief from their backbreaking labors. Over the years farmers have become more aware of conservation methods to prevent erosion and to protect the water. Some farmers have planted buffer strips—wide strips of grass—along waterways. These grassy strips trap soil and chemicals before they reach the water. Many farmers have changed plowing practices—plowing their fields less often and not as deep. This helps to keep soil from blowing away.  They learned about new kinds of technologies such as food-freezing processes that revolutionized food storage. They also learned about hybrid seed that boosted crop production, and soybeans that became a major crop addition. New ways of spreading information allowed farm families to hear about soil conservation programs also. They learned about cattle and hog breeding which in turn improved the livestock industry.

In short it has enabled higher efficiency often with less workload. I'll rattle off a few examples that come to the top of my mind. 

Precision farming using GPS equipment and programming has enabled greater efficiency through less waste. If you have machinery equipped with this, it is now possible to not only virtually eliminate overlap between passes, which saves time and fuel. It is also now possible to do precision fertilizer application with this equipment by loading in the soil test maps. Now each area of the field can receive the proper amount of fertilizer with less chance of over or under applying. Which can boost potential in some areas of the field and reduce waste in other areas. 

With some help from transgenic research now GMO varieties of some crops can have resistance to things such as certain herbicides, or greater insect resistance. These can help greatly by either eliminating a trip with the sprayer in the case of BT crops (insect resistant), which saves time fuel, and insecticide. Or in the case of herbicide resistant crops can allow the use of a safer pesticide, that in some cases is cheaper to be used. Roundup Ready is a case of this, there are many inexpensive generics of the chemical out there. Not to mention it has much less of a chance of doing harm to people or

the environment if not used properly/carefully than many others that would be used. 

Going back quite a few years being able to mechanize many things has been a huge help to productivity. First tractors replaced horses, allowing more work to be done with less strain, then the tractors kept getting larger as have the tools they pull. This not only allows for more to be done in less time with less effort, but it also allows for crops to be planted more densely, which often improves the yield per acre. I have an excellent testimony here; a few years ago we partnered with one of the neighbors for all of the harvesting and a few other things. By each owning certain larger pieces of machinery, and working together now we can get all of both farm's hay done in half the time it used to take either of us, and with shared equipment we have a little less invested in equipment than we did before. 

Another one that goes back quite a few years that's really helped on food quality and safety is refrigeration. I'm in dairy and we need to get our milk cold and keep it cold, not only is this a legal requirement, but it inhibits bacterial growth, improving shelf life, flavor, and gives people a safer product. Ditto for pasteurization, it helps provide a safer product for the consumer. 

Another one that's been around a while that's huge is vaccinations help ensure healthy animals, leading to a greater supply of animal products through the faster growth allowed by staying healthy, as well as cut down on the time, stress, cost, etc of caring for sick animals. Same goes for antibiotics. It used to be with some infections the animal was either a lost cause or set back quite a ways, now these are often easily treatable, and can get her back to good health relatively quickly.