-Livemint.com Loan waivers and electricity subsidies are band-aids at best; a deeper transformation is needed The past few days have neatly summed up the scale and nature of the challenges facing India’s agriculture sector. First, the provisional agriculture census 2015-16 showed that landholdings have continued their decades-long trend of fragmentation, leading to a further rise in the proportion of small and marginal farmers. Then, 30,000 farmers, who had started their march from...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The increase in farm land holdings, a consistent trend since the 1970s, has been slowing down in the past 20 years but there is a rise in the number of female land holders, a possible indicator of higher involvement in farm activities, the provisional agriculture census 2015-16, has revealed. The trend could mean the association of farming with “kisan bhai (farmer brothers)” might be less exclusively...

-Down to Earth Shailaja Fennell, an expert in gender and household dynamics in agriculture, talks to Down To Earth about millet production in India As India witnesses the central government launch a campaign to promote nutri cereals, Down To Earth talks to an expert about the relevance of millets, its cultural significance and its benefits for women. Shailaja Fennell, university senior lecturer in development studies at the department of land economy in...

-The Telegraph Bid to help poor who lost cattle in floods A Kerala district has devised a programme under which people are being requested to donate cows to the poor who lost their cattle in the recent floods and landslides. The hill district of Wayanad, which recorded the death of 223 cows during the calamity, has come up with the Donate a Cow programme, under which the administration will rebuild the Livelihoods of...

-The Telegraph They are protesting the Centre’s move to regularise online sale of medicines New Delhi: An association of brick-and-mortar retail chemists has called on all its 800,000 members nationwide to observe a day-long strike on Friday in protest against the Centre’s move to regularise online sale of medicines. The All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD) has claimed that online sales would raise the risk of drug abuse and drug interactions...