-The Hindu Business Line Both the Centre and States need to be prepared for the possibility in peninsular India The bad news is that the met department’s pessimistic monsoon forecast — of it being 7 per cent less than the long-period average (LPA) — is turning out to be right. The monsoon started off with much promise in June, finishing the month with a 16 per cent surplus and kharif sowing doing...

-The Tribune Amritsar: To provide chemical-free ‘langar’ to the devotees visiting the Golden Temple and other historic shrines, the SGPC has decided to adopt organic farming. In the first phase of the project, 5 acres in each of the SGPC-run 35 historic gurdwaras will be covered.   The SGPC is hoping that its initiative would promote organic farming in the state where the people urgently need to get rid of agricultural produce laced...

-The Tribune Chandigarh: The worst fears about the northern region of the country losing its groundwater have been confirmed. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) satellite imagery made available to the Centre warns of fast disappearing of subsoil water in these states. The NASA report forwarded to the Punjab Government by the Union Ministry of Agriculture says that “beneath north India’s irrigated fields, the groundwater has been disappearing”. “It is being...

-The Hindu Bengaluru: After slump in prices and harassment from moneylenders, the farming community now faces another hardship – failure of kharif crops owing to severe drought. About 26 per cent of the sown area has withered owing to scanty rainfall in more than 20 districts of the State. Already nearly 200 farmers committed suicides owing to indebtedness and other reasons in the last four months in the State. The South-West monsoon being...

Although MGNREGA has been looked upon with suspicion by the Government, industry as well as the landed farming class for various reasons including inefficiency, leakages, corruption, rise in rural wages, cost escalation etc., a new report reveals that the programme reduced poverty among its participants between 2004-05 and 2011-12 by providing employment. The report entitled Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act: A Catalyst for Rural Transformation has estimated that...