Will you go and make complaints to the same public official against whom you have a grievance? Of course not. However, in a judgement dated 21 July, 2017 by a two-judge Supreme Court (SC) bench, it has been observed that officers in charge of implementation of the National Food Security Act (NFSA), were also designated as District Grievance Redressal Officers (DGROs) by several state governments. Section 15 of NFSA The SC...

-The Indian Express Agriculture education is in a poor state. ICAR must be revamped Although autarky on Indian farms is a distant dream, as the 71st year of Independence dawns, penury-ridden farmers are still committing suicide by the thousands— a consequence of decades of short-sightedness, while economists and scientists are still equating food sufficiency to farmer sustainability. The occasion merits introspection on the core issues of farmers’ distress. We must begin at the...

-The Financial Express Pune: Farmer producer companies in Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana are considering the possibility of commencing trading in grapes, potato seeds and basmati rice soon. A 30-member team from farmer producer companies (FPCs) associated with the northern operations of the Vegetable Growers Association of India (VGAI) and the Haryana horticulture department was in Maharashtra to study the infrastructure of FPCs in the state and the establishment of logistics for...

-Livemint.com Unlike the dhoti-clad, topi-wearing quintessential ‘kisan’, the new Indian farmer is vocal and tech-savvy New Delhi: In the winter of 1988 when the feisty farmer leader from Uttar Pradesh, Mahendra Singh Tikait, laid siege to Delhi with thousands of cultivators and their cattle literally creating a mess of the boat club lawns, agriculture’s share in India’s gross domestic product (GDP) was about 30%. About three decades later, the farm sector’s share in...

-Deccan Herald New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra on Monday said the government is likely to scrap public distribution scheme (PDS) system and transfer money directly to the accounts of poor beneficiaries after getting encouraging results from Haryana and Puducherry. Modi stated this during his Monday's informal discussion with BJP MPs from Delhi, J-K, Haryana, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh. According to a press statement issued on the outcome of interaction with...