Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar on Wednesday said that the "revolutionary" target of land to the tillers should be pursued honestly to sustain the interests of farm labourers and increase the Agricultural Productivity of India. "Agricultural labourer is the real farmer. With their hard work, we are able to grow crops but they do not have lands. 'Land to the tillers' revolutionary target should not fade away. This should be achieved...

The Punjab Cabinet on Wednesday rolled back its decision on payment of power bills by farmers and restored the facility of free electricity for their agricultural tubewells with immediate effect. The state government had, earlier this year, introduced a system under which farmers were made to pay a part of the power bills which were to be reimbursed to them as “productivity bonus”. The proposal to roll back the decision was not...

For generations, a majority of Vidarbha’s debt-ridden farmers have only grown cotton, making themselves vulnerable to unreliable market conditions. Now, these and other districts facing an agrarian crisis, as well as the rest of the state’s agriculture community may have some reason to smile. Rs 643 crore will be pumped into the state for the farmers, with the government going ahead with its ambitious Maharashtra Competitive Agriculture Project (MACP). On Tuesday, the...

The pattern of land distribution has rendered rural landscape of UP disfavourable for farming. The precursor for this is the fragmentation of cultivable land into a large number of `small landholdings'. The process set under the demographic pressure, has caused marginalisation of a vast majority of farmers and posed a severe challenge to the prospects of rural economy and the growth of agriculture in future. Going by the official figure, UP...

The first tentative moves towards the formation of a representative body of farmers — the National Alliance of Farmers' Associations — were made by the Bharatiya Janata Party at a meeting here over the week-end. The BJP said it was of the view that efforts must be made to set up a farmers' organisation akin to the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry...