-The Hindu Business Line Short tenure of the policy is its biggest drawback. With El Nino expected to mar the monsoon this year, insurers may stay away A normal monsoon in 2016, after two years of drought, has not only led to a bountiful harvest for farmers, but also filled the coffers of private insurers. The Kharif 2016 season resulting in lower claims has helped private insurers in particular rake in good profits...

-The Hindu The interaction between people and land is as old as human evolution. When early hunter-gatherers started to settle down in the Neolithic transition and practise agriculture, they began to change their relationship with land in a major way. Starting with the Holocene, approximately 11,500 years ago, many plants were domesticated for agriculture. These and the associated social and technological changes led to dense human settlements that then paved the...

The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) election manifesto for 2014 Lok Sabha election says that if elected to the Centre, it will then "(p)ut in place welfare measures for farmers above 60 years in age, small and marginal farmers and farm labours", among other things. Despite the formation of a BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre in 2014, the latest available data on farm suicides from the...

-Scroll.in India’s first chief statistician, Pronab Sen, is now country director of the International Growth Centre, which seeks to build effective growth facilities through engagement between policymakers and researchers. In this interview to Scroll.in, he speaks on the 50 days of demonetisation, its failings, its severe impact on the poor, the loss of credibility of the Reserve Bank of India, the push to make India a cashless or less-cash economy, and...

-India Water Portal Despite farmers’ apprehension, the new crop insurance scheme, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, is considered a game changer. “Agriculture is a highly risky venture,” says Nagi Reddy, a farmer in Anantapur. Reddy is a small farmer affected by uncertainty in crop production stemming from unpredictable weather events and pest attacks, especially in his cotton crop. He works on his 2.5-acre farm and the rest of the time, he...