-Hindustan Times The Narendra Modi government’s new agenda for the crisis-ridden farm sector is being geared towards achieving the single goal of doubling agricultural incomes — a legacy of its first term in office. Prime Minister Modi had ambitiously promised a 100% jump in farmers’ incomes between 2017 and 2022, but farmers have been hobbled by unprofitable sales and even negative returns on some crops, as farm produce continue to sell below...

-Mumbai Mirror Modi, with his brilliant communication skills along with the media at his disposal, managed to convince farmers to give him a longer rope A senior farm leader had once told me in a regretful tone: “Whenever farmers are denied their rightful crop insurance, or they are harassed by banks for loan recovery, they come to us. We agitate, protest and resist the system’s bullying of farmers. But the same farmers...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to accommodate representatives of most castes in his Council of Ministers but upper castes got a dominant presence, bagging 32 of the 58 berths. Ministers from Other Backward Classes, a crucial political constituency, numbered 13. Nine Brahmin leaders have found place in the Union cabinet, including Nitin Gadkari. Three Thakur leaders also made it, including Rajnath Singh, Jodhpur MP Gajendra Singh...

-Livemint.com * NSSO and CSO are to be merged into what will be known as NSO * The order puts the merged entity under Mospi secretary The ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) passed an order on 23 May to merge the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) into the National Statistical Office (NSO). Mint analyses what led to the decision. * When was a revamp of the statistical...

-Firstpost.com The sensitivity of agricultural productivity to climate depends strongly on crop selection. India is a vast country with disparate climate variability and change signals from north-to-south and east-to-west. The mix of field crops like rice, wheat, jowar, corn and soybean, as well as speciality products like vegetables, flowers, nuts, fruits, etc, are also vastly different across the subcontinent. To understand the climate sensitivity of agriculture across such complex terrain that has...