-Livemint.com As long as farmers with access to irrigated land aren’t interested in growing pulses, supply and price shocks will keep haunting consumers and governments New Delhi: The centre’s efforts to contain prices of pulses during the festive season is showing few results on the ground. On Monday, retail prices of tur dal (arhar or pigeon pea) climbed to Rs.205 per kg in Mysore in Karnataka and Rs.210 per kg in Puducherry,...

-The Times of India BATAGUDA (Odisha): Women and men working on the hillsides is a common sight when travelling through Odisha's Kandhamal district. All day, they crouch in the scorching sun, using crude tools to break large rocks into little stones. It takes each person several days to fill a 5ft-tall container with enough stones to earn about Rs 900. Most tribal women do this backbreaking work but with hardly any proteins...

-DNA When it comes to farmers, the government has precious little to offer The monsoon season is over. With 14 per cent shortfall in the amount of rains, and with nearly 39 per cent of the cropped area in the country hit by a crippling drought, I was expecting the Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan to announce a series of monetary benefits and exemptions in credit repayments for farmers....

-The Indian Express Farmers are unanimous that Punjab hasn’t seen such bad days, with one or the other crop failing in consecutive seasons — and now basmati selling even below parmal. Jalandhar: When farmers in Punjab began taking the harvested grain from their Pusa-1509 superfine basmati paddy crop early this month, they were shocked to see it fetch rates below not just half of last year’s levels, but even the official minimum...

-DNA State policies favouring certain food crops have rendered pulses forbiddingly expensive and the common man is feeling the pinch The huge spurt in dal prices, touching Rs180 per kilogram and even Rs200 in some cities, has come as a dampener to the festive season, and raised questions about the policies of the government. For some years now, India has been resorting to huge imports of pulses to meet domestic demand...