-The Hindu If we run out of groundwater, millions of people will be left without any means to sustain themselves The protest by farmers in Chikballapur recently, over the scarcity of drinking water, received extensive news coverage as it halted Bengaluru in its tracks after key highways were blocked. Interestingly, very little of that coverage was devoted to the groundwater crisis that underpins the problem in such regions. Groundwater plays an important role...

-Outlook In the last two decades, more than 300,000 farmers have ended their lives. What can be done? Indian agriculture is important as it feeds an estimated 1.3 billion population of the country and is also burdened with the responsibility of providing livelihoods to 60 per cent of the people — 780 million people. No foreign country can produce this mammoth quantity of food and supply to India nor any sector...

-International Business Times Bone-dry India’s water crisis seems to bringing the 2015 blockbuster film “Mad Max” to life. Apart from a deteriorating quality of life, countless diseases and loss of economic opportunities, India’s lack of water is also causing a plethora of social ills. Two successive years of droughts have resulted in India’s water crisis worsening by the minute, with a whopping 75.8 million Indians -- five percent of the country’s population...

-The Indian Express The number of arhtiya suicides may not be anywhere close to those by farmers, but they do suggest a certain trend. When prices of commodities, be it basmati rice or cotton, were good, farmers planted with gusto. The ongoing agrarian crisis has spread beyond farmers to consume even arhtiyas or grain commission agents, as a report in this newspaper from Punjab has shown. The number of arhtiya suicides may...

-The Indian Express In Marathwada’s worst-hit districts of Beed, Osmanabad and Latur, households now have an uncompromising priority list of expenses as an economy hit by years of near-total crop failure goes into a tailspin. Beed/ Osmanabad: About 65 kilometres from the cracked earth that was once their source of income, Mandakini Mujmule, in her forties, and her daughter Anita, 21, have spent 16 days in Beed city’s government hospital. Mandakini has...