-The Economic Times Farmers are agitated. Loan waivers have not stemmed protests or farmer suicides. This is a multidimensional problem and also a huge political opportunity for parties that can think constructively. Waiving loans is bad policy. It adds to the fiscal stress of states, straining under the electricity utility debt they have taken over. The states would undo the Centre’s hard-wrought fiscal discipline, scaring rating agencies. Waived loans bring little benefit to...

-The Hindu Leading hydrogeology scientist explains how India’s dependence on groundwater could lead to a crisis if left unchecked Mumbai: Groundwater is the world’s most extracted raw material, supplying and sustaining a range of human activity. Yet, because it is invisible and it’s supply often taken for granted, it is often inadequately acknowledged in policy and debates about the preservation of groundwater commons and aquifers. At best, it is usually shrouded in...

-The Hindu Govt. still hopeful of achieving 100 lakh metric tonnes target Chennai: Even as it predicted that the severe unprecedented drought witnessed in the State during 2016-17 “may affect the foodgrain production over the next two years,” the Tamil Nadu government appears hopeful of achieving the target of 100 lakh metric tonnes in agricultural production during 2017-18. Listing out various policies and strategies for agro-ecological intensification during 2017-18, the State government, in...

-The Tribune Punjab Govt looks other way, says no record of landless agri workers’ debt Chandigarh: While the Punjab Government dithers on providing debt relief to landless labourers, a new report suggests the number of suicides committed by landless agricultural labourers due to debt is much higher than those by farmers in the state. The “census report” commissioned by the Punjab Government on rural suicides takes into account incidences between 2010 and 2016...

-TheWire.in Legislative action that primarily looks at cattle mobility as ‘acts of smuggling cattle out of state for slaughter’ is deeply misguided and betrays a misunderstanding of how India’s cattle have been bought and sold since the British Raj. Like many poorly drafted laws, the recently notified Livestock Markets (Regulation) Rules is so pre-occupied with its self-righteousness that it fails to realise the harm that it would cause. If the colonial era’s...