-The Times of India MUMBAI: Farmer suicides in Maharashtra are intensifying with as many as 1,088 cases reported in 2015 by the end of May. This is almost twice the figure reported just two months ago. Between January and March, the state government had reported 601 cases. The suicide rate had already begun climbing steeply with the onset of the drought last year which destroyed large swathes of crops. The unseasonal rain...

-The Financial Express The Narendra Modi government has pledged to employ all machinery at its disposal to deal with a second straight year of deficient monsoon. The Narendra Modi government has pledged to employ all machinery at its disposal to deal with a second straight year of deficient monsoon and denied an impending distress in the vulnerable pockets of the country, but a dispassionate look at the ground situation would show there...

-Livemint.com Politicians prefer a short-term response over a more nuanced, structural solution to the problem of Rural distress Confirming everyone’s worst fears, last week the India Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast a deficient monsoon this year. The next day, some of the newspapers wrongly reported it as a drought (guess breathless reporting is no longer a preserve of the electronic media), adding to the disappointment of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) refusal...

-IPS News BETUL, India- Mamta Bai, 36, distinctly remembers the first time the police came to her village: it was December 2014 and her neighbour, Purva Bai, had just been beaten unconscious by her alcoholic husband, prompting Mamta to make a distress call to the nearest station. Once in the neighborhood, policemen pulled the abusive husband out of his home and asked the village women if they wanted him to be arrested. “Yes,”...

-The Hindu ‘Its geographical distribution is what matters’ Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said here on Thursday that concerns about the impact of a deficient monsoon on the economy were “misplaced” and “far-fetched”. He told presspersons that conclusions were being made in an exaggerated manner after the India Meteorological Department forecast on Tuesday that rainfall would be only 88 per cent of the long-term average. “The speculation and analyses we have seen in the...