-News18.com Acclaimed journalist and Founder-Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India, P Sainath attributes the existential crisis confronting India’s agrarian society to macro-economic policies set in motion 25 years ago. Talking to Anuradha SenGupta, Sainath makes a case for state intervention in agriculture and says the Modi government, with its shifting positions and policies like demonetisation has only aggravated the assault on agrarian livelihoods. Dismissing the buzz about imminent new initiatives...

  In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among other things, promised to "take steps to enhance the profitability in agriculture, by ensuring a minimum of 50% profits over the cost of production". In his 2018-19 Union budget speech too, the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley informed the Parliament that the 2014 election manifesto of the BJP had stated that the farmers should get at least 1.5 times the...

-The Indian Express The unprecedented procurement of pulses and oilseeds in the last couple of years has created problems — and opportunities. If there’s one area in agriculture where the Narendra Modi government has probably broken fresh ground, it is in the procurement of pulses and oilseeds.   During the 2016-17 and 2017-18 agricultural years (July-June), the Central agencies — National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (Nafed), Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC)...

-Livemint.com Delayed assessment of loss and settlement of claims by insurance companies may have led to farmers losing faith in Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, say analysts New Delhi: Sharad Markad, a lanky teenager from a marginal farming family in Maharashtra, spent the first day of 2019 scrounging for funds. Faced with a drought, the third in the past five years, Markad had taken it upon himself to build a community cattle...

-The Hindu The authority of Adam Smith is frequently invoked by supporters of the free market, who argue for extending the market forces to all conceivable goods and services and eliminating any kind of government intervention in markets. However, Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations make it clear that he was not a laissez faire or free market...