-The Indian Express Behind dumping of potatoes, including outside Assembly, a bumper crop and insufficient storage space. Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh, the largest potato producing state with about 35% of the country’s total output, has had a bumper crop in 2016-17 — over 155 lakh tonnes — with the result that potatoes are rotting along roadsides and outside cold storage units. What threw the spotlight on the surplus — apparently more than the government...

-Down to Earth The average agricultural growth has reached its lowest in the last four years to 1.9 per cent While presenting Union Budget 2017-18, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley gave much emphasis on farmers. He even announced an increased budget outlay for agriculture, which made media houses declare it as a budget for rural India. Soon, the dust settled down and reality came to the surface. The budget was increased by...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre's plan to install nearly a million solar-powered water pumps for irrigation in the next three years through a 30 per cent government subsidy appears fiscally unrealistic, energy researchers cautioned on Thursday and called for alternative financing strategies. The researchers with the New Delhi-based Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW) have estimated that the 30 per cent subsidy on solar irrigation pumps would cost the government...

-The Hindu India must exploit the potential of this technology to help farmers meet irrigation needs In the past few years, solar pumps have consistently piqued the interest of various bureaucrats and politicians. The Prime Minister spoke about solar pumps from the ramparts of the Red Fort in 2016. There is no shortage of ideas which the Centre, States, civil society organisations, and enterprises are adopting to enhance penetration of solar for...

-Down to Earth Income inequality makes agrarian crisis challenging; inequality is worse among farmers than the formal economy Economists Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty recently concluded after a long study that inequality is at its peak in India. It is embedded in popular conscience: “Top 1 per cent of earners captured 22 per cent of total income in the country.” Their study–covering consumption, government accounts and income tax data from 1922...