-The Indian Express Farmers can install solar panels on their fields that can generate income in addition to regular crop agriculture. Of its several new initiatives, the Narendra Modi government has set out at least two very ambitious targets, which are also quantifiable. One is achieving 100 giga-watts (GW) of solar power generation capacity by the year 2022. The other is doubling farmers’ income — presumably in real terms — also by 2022,...

-The Financial Express For India, a looming freshwater crisis—the World Bank already puts the country’s per capita renewable freshwater resources at less than a fifth of the world, far behind the other four in the list of top-five populous countries—is set to become a nightmare. A study published in Nature Geoscience has found that, upto a depth of 200 metres, 60% of the groundwater in the Indian part of the Indo-Gangetic...

-Livemint.com New system to settle dues to fertilizer firms within a week, record detailed transaction data at time of sale New Delhi: The direct benefits transfer (DBT) scheme for fertilizers that will go on trial in eight districts this month will not entail what its name suggests— the transfer of cash to farmers’ Bank Accounts. Under the direct transfer of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) subsidy, customers pay the entire amount for cooking...

-The Indian Express The incidence of farmers taking their own lives is higher in regions where cooperative banks are the weakest. Nanded (Maharashtra): The verdant soyabean fields at Digras today are a far cry from the barren landscape they presented only a few months ago. But for residents of this village in Ardhapur taluka of Nanded district, the memories of drought in three out of the last four years will not fade...

-Livemint.com Considerable differences persist across states in terms of retail inflation, mostly on account of rural food price rise Mumbai: With consumer price inflation fast emerging as the focal point of monetary policymaking in India, perhaps it is time to delve into the not-so-insignificant differences in inflation across states. To begin with, inflation, both retail and wholesale, has risen in recent months. This has raised concerns about the scope of further interest...