-TheWire.in While suicides and shock deaths have seen a sudden spike in Tamil Nadu’s Cauvery delta region, the government does not believe the drought is the cause and is continuing to direct water away from rural areas. From the banks of the Kollidam river, S. Selvaraju’s farm is barely a mile away. The huge river, actually a tributary of the Cauvery that drains its surplus water into the sea, runs along the village...

-The Indian Express Agriculture cannot survive without them. But they are invisible in the current conversation on the agrarian crisis An ex-company executive-cum-economist turns to the anchor during a discussion on the farmers’ agitation. “Overpopulation is destroying the Farming activity. There are simply too many mouths to feed and the farms are shrinking. We must look to the urban areas for creating new jobs,” he says. The man at the local paan...

-Hindustan Times More and more farmers are falling into debt trap because Farming is no longer profitable and big-ticket infrastructure projects are taking away their lands. Nasik: Shantaram Waghchowre’s worries are multiplying. Already hit by plunging prices for the crops he grows in his five-acre family farm in Maharashtra’s Pimpalgaon Dukre village of Nasik district, he is now staring at abject penury. The state government is set to acquire 50,000 acres of land...

-Livemint.com Forgiving farm loans is no solution. The data shows there’s a far more fundamental problem—most agricultural households are unable to keep body and soul together. There’s nothing new about rural distress. Nor is it surprising. If the income of almost 70% of farm households is less than their consumption expenditure, according to the government’s own data, then it’s obvious they’ll be “distressed”. Yet that’s the inescapable conclusion from the National Sample...

-TheWire.in The Indian farmer is not just a poor, helpless victim who deserves a waiver because he cannot pay. The root cause of the debt trap is that his income has not increased with rising expenditure due to state policies. As Punjab joins the list of states to declare farm loan waivers, the political scales are now heavily tilted in favour of this idea. The government of Telangana, followed by Andhra Pradesh,...