-The Hindu Thousands of farmers gathered at the Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi on Monday. Banners and flags of different organisations were waved, but what brought them together was a common demand — a one-time complete waiver of farmer Loans and fair prices for their produce. Under a common umbrella of All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) around 184 farmer groups from across states such as Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh,...

-TheWire.in In 2016-17, pending payments under the employment scheme in the state amounted to a whopping Rs 5,571 crore. Tiravur, Tamil Nadu: “I could kill someone,” said Janaki Chinarasu in early June at her home in Tiruvarur, protecting her forehead from the heat with her hands askew. “It’s like the sun god has conspired with the rain god to punish us.” Chinarasu is a frail, strong-witted woman with a five-year-old on her lap...

-Livemint.com Tractor sales have gone up in a year which has seen farmer protests in several states for remunerative crop prices and farm Loan waivers, amid lingering effects of demonetisation and GST implementation New Delhi: Domestic tractor sales rose to a record in the first half of the fiscal year, but economists are hesitating to interpret it as a sign that the farm economy has finally turned the corner. Tractor manufacturers sold 363,071...

-Scroll.in A severe shortage of government-distributed pesticides aggravated the crop loss from attacks by brown planthoppers. A twin calamity has struck farmers in Odisha in recent weeks. A moderate to severe drought has affected paddy crops on more than 3.1 lakh hectares of land in over 6,000 villages across 15 districts. In addition, an attack by brown planthoppers – insects that feed on rice plants – has destroyed paddy fields on...

-The Hindu We need to revisit the credit policy with a focus on the outreach of banks and financial inclusion Since Independence, one of the primary objectives of India’s agricultural policy has been to improve farmers’ access to institutional credit and reduce their dependence on informal credit. As informal sources of credit are mostly usurious, the government has improved the flow of adequate credit through the nationalisation of commercial banks, and the...