Nearly 2 lakh farmers committed suicide in India since 1997. The share of big five states accounted for 1,22,823 suicides in this 12 year period. The data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau points out that 16,196 farmers in India ended their life in 2008. K Nagaraj, an economist, in his report Farmers' suicides in India: Magnitude, Trends and Spatial Patterns, says, "The title to land was taken as the...

Finally, they have bitten the bullet on fertiliser subsidy. For the past three years, the Union government has agonised on the issue of mounting expenditure on this account and has not had the courage to cut the subsidy. While Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced his intent to introduce a nutrient-based subsidy (NBS) in his last Budget Speech, he has finally shown courage to do so on the eve of this...

After the suspicion and hostility of a few held up the introduction of Bt brinjal, the prime minister’s economic advisory council has stepped in to provide some good sense. In the context of Bt cotton’s success, the council recommended farm evaluations and a comprehensive risk analysis of GM crops, the results of which should be brought into the public domain as soon as possible. In India, the Bt brinjal case...

The Left parties would raise a demand to scrap the “archaic” Land Acquisition Act, 1884, as it facilitated land acquisition by big corporates, who took advantage of the acute distress of farmers, Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat said here on Sunday. “Why are they [the Centre] delaying the scrapping of the Act?” she said. “There is utter hypocrisy in land reforms and distribution in the country.”...

The government's decision to hike urea prices, as part of its move to rationalise subsidies, has upset farmers. Farmers are heavily dependent on urea for their production. They say it will only increase their burden. Commenting on the Cabinet's decision, one of the farmers in Punjab said, "It is a big setback for the farmers as Punjab yields maximum production." Farmers are already under so much debt, with the increase in the...