-The Indian Express In Marathwada’s worst-hit districts of Beed, Osmanabad and Latur, households now have an uncompromising priority list of expenses as an economy hit by years of near-total crop failure goes into a tailspin. Beed/ Osmanabad: About 65 kilometres from the cracked earth that was once their source of income, Mandakini Mujmule, in her forties, and her daughter Anita, 21, have spent 16 days in Beed city’s government hospital. Mandakini has...

-The Times of India Bhagalpur: Sanju Devi (55), a resident of Tailath village in Khagaria district, had never thought that her innovative practices in farming on a small piece of land near her house would fetch her laurels and hog the limelight at the Kisan Mela 2016 organized by Bihar Agricultural University (BAU) at Sabour in Bhagalpur district. Sanju grows high-yielding vegetables, including mushrooms, rears honeybees and runs poultry by adopting integrated...

-The Indian Express Central allocations for agriculture are less important than the state budgets. I took the night train to Delhi to participate in budget-day discussions and my co-passenger, who boarded the train in ravaged Punjab, asked me a simple question: “50 farmers are committing suicide everyday; will the budget end farmer suicides?” My answer was — and still is — “No.” The Union budget is just the government’s bookkeeping exercise...

-Hindustan Times Bhubaneswar/ Dongargarh: PM Narendra Modi wooed rural India on Sunday, inaugurating a rural-urban or Rurban mission at Dongargarh in Chhattisgarh and exhorting Odisha farmers to sign up for his government’s crop insurance scheme. The Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Scheme, aimed at improving basic infrastructure, was launched from the Maoist-hit district of Rajnandgaon. “When we talk of smart cities, why can’t we talk of smart villages? The villages in our country...

-Business Standard To be announced in next few weeks and in coming Budget To widen its rural push and to counter the Opposition's allegation that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government is anti-poor, the Centre is mulling multiple interventions which would include expanding the role of women-driven self help groups (SHGs) and promoting self-employment for rural youth. Some official said the new crop insurance scheme, approved by the Cabinet recently is part of...