-The Indian Express Closure of Sterlite plant says something about our collective morality: Death, violence move governments more than reason and evidence It took a brazen exercise of what sociologists since Max Weber refer to as the state’s “monopoly of violence” by Tamil Nadu authorities to bring our attention to a problem that had been affecting the local residents of Tuticorin for over two decades. Since this tragic incident, it took hardly...

-The Indian Express The son said that after his father's death in 2010, the little produce from a small farm with the family lasted barely two-to-three months. Officials are also probing as to why the woman, or any other member of her family, was reportedly not getting any other government benefits. Ranchi: A 58-year-old woman allegedly died of starvation at a village under Dumri Block of Giridih district in Jharkhand. District officials...

-The Indian Express The result in the Kairana Lok Sabha seat bypoll, where ganna payment was the main issue, brought forth a crisis born of advances in plant breeding and boost in sugarcane production. Not many would have heard of Bakshi Ram. Currently director of the Sugarcane Breeding Institute (SBI) at Coimbatore, he isn’t as well-known as Norman Borlaug or M S Swaminathan. Yet, the wonder sugarcane variety, Co-0238, bred by...

-Financial Express Loan waivers adversely affect marginal farmers due to a reduction of formal credit channels given to them On the eve of the Karnataka election, waivers of farm loans were one of the major election promises. Now, chief minister HD Kumaraswamy wants to fulfill his pre-poll promise and even threatened to resign if he cannot fulfill his promise. As has been seen time and time again, “farmers first” provides political mileage....

-The Indian Express A single national agriculture market, promised by the BJP in its 2014 manifesto, remains a pipe dream. Can the government reform the broken APMC structure in the last year of its term? In its 2014 Lok Sabha election manifesto, the BJP promised to evolve a single national agriculture market (NAM) in the country with a view to enable farmers to get a better price and consumers to pay a...