Farmers unable to bear the costs of agricultural inputs: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Charging the Trinamool Congress-led government with failing to admit the prevalence of farmers' suicides in the State, Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said here on Sunday that such suicides were “not seen or heard of” when the Left Front was in power for 34 years. “The government is not ready to accept that the farmers...
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Agri Min pitches for crop loan at 3% in Budget
-PTI In its Budget wish-list, the Agriculture Ministry has demanded lowering of interest rate on Crop Loans to 3% for those farmers who pay in time, from the existing 4%. According to sources, the ministry has suggested an additional 1% interest subvention (subsidy) on short-term Crop Loans of up to Rs 3 lakh to farmers who pay their dues on time. Other farmers get Crop Loans at seven% interest rate. The 2012-13 Budget...
More »Farmers' kin upset over West Bengal's refusal to acknowledge suicides by Ananya Dutta
“Believe me, I am not making any of this up,” insists Asim Saha brother of Amiya Saha, who killed himself after consuming a bottle of pesticide a month ago after failing to find buyers for the paddy he had harvested, when he speaks of the events that occurred on the fateful night and the paddy that remains unsold at their home in Rajpur village in the West Bengal's Bardhaman district. The...
More »Time to end West's farm subsidy as a condition for funding European bailouts: Swaminathan A Aiyar
-The Economic Times The IMF wants to increase its lending capacity by $1 trillion, to rescue distressed countries in the eurozone plus those hit by aftershocks from the eurozone. But US is struggling with fiscal problems of its own, Japan now has the highest debt/GDP ratio in the world (over 200%), and Europe is moving into an austerity phase. Clearly, a significant chunk of the new trillion will have to come from...
More »From food security to food justice by Ananya Mukherjee
If the malnourished in India formed a country, it would be the world's fifth largest — almost the size of Indonesia. According to Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 237.7 million Indians are currently undernourished (up from 224.6 million in 2008). And it is far worse if we use the minimal calorie intake norms accepted officially in India. By those counts (2200 rural/2100 urban), the number of Indians who cannot afford...
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